


Matchmaking

by Nori



Series: Finding Guardians [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff, Gamer AU - Freeform, Gen, I GUESS? IDK THIS IS LIKE DIPPING MY TOES INTO THE WATER TO TEST IT OUT OK, M/M, Meet-Cute, Shrunkyclunks, Slow Burn, That's right, cap!steve - Freeform, featuring destiny the game, modern bucky and captain america steve in a whirlwind xbox live romance, modern!Bucky, rated mature for language because idk how to rate things??? and i swear a lot, the au literally no one asked for but i'm obsessed with destiny, this whole thing is super dialogue heavy jsyk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-08-11 21:25:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 34,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7908166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nori/pseuds/Nori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Look, that was not my fault,” says a deep voice, crackling over the mic. Bucky jumps and clutches at his chest, heart pounding.</p><p>“Holy shit, you’re using the in game chat?” Bucky croaks. No one uses Destiny’s in game chat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prepare for combat

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Matchmaking (中文翻译)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10210304) by [Pearlson613](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pearlson613/pseuds/Pearlson613)



> I haven't written anything with serious intent in MONTHS but I'm absolutely in love with Shrunkyclunks and Destiny just won't let me live, so TA-DA! I present this. Also, I'm sorry. I've got this whole big long production from Steve's POV planned in my head but I'm lazy as hell so who knows if that'll ever happen. It was gonna be super cute too - like Steve first getting into gaming (in all of his time off HA) and learning all the lingo and bantering with Bucky and Sam was gonna be there and Nat was gonna kick all their asses anyway and then there was gonna be the awkward attempts at bringing up a meet up, etc etc. 
> 
> But anyway, here's this I guess. This is not an accurate depiction of what it's like to play Destiny, but my friends and I really do call them blueberries.

The hunter hefts his sniper rifle, heart hammering as the crosshairs steady on his target’s head. He squeezes the trigger and the gun kicks back hard, the barrel snapping up from the force. He doesn’t look for his target; simply rights the gun and sights another. 

He catches a look at his teammate, a flurry of colorful robes billowing as he rushes through the throng of enemies. If he listens closely, the hunter can just make out the steady chug of the machine gun in the warlock’s hands. The beginnings of a cocky smirk on his lips, the hunter leans into his rifle and fires again. 

Minutes tick by in this manner, punctuated by the steady snap of bullets leaving the tip of his sniper. The crowd of hostile aliens dwindles, and the hunter’s teammate becomes more and more reckless. Dressed in nothing but the festive vestments of his order, the warlock picks at the edges of the group, zipping in close to swing his fists. The enemies swing back, but the warlock is quick. He dodges back before any of them can lay a hand on him.

As their brothers in arm fall, the group gathers tighter and tighter together. They heft huge metal shields, trying to protect the soldier to their side, like the phalanxes of old. The warlock races into the crowd, bathed in the light, and heaves a devastating energy bomb into their midst. They scream and crumple, piling up around the warlock’s feet like a macabre shrine to his power. 

The warlock wheels toward the hunter unerringly, pointing one finger like a gun up to his sniper perch. The hunter leaps from the gangway he’s crouching on, hurtling toward the ground. He jumps just before he touches down, pushing up off the power of the light and landing gently just a few feet before the warlock. He lifts his hand to wave, but before he can begin to celebrate, there’s a rumble in the ground. 

Behind him, the sky tears open, and an orb of darkness forms. From it stumbles Valus Trau’ug, disoriented and furious for the bodies of his team strewn across the ground. The hunter rushes back, ducking behind natural cover and switching to his quick firing scout rifle. He sights in, sees Trau’ug towering where he’d left him and fresh troops stumbling into the world around him, and, to the hunter’s horror, the warlock. His teammate is still standing, confident and so, so foolish in a pile of Trau’ug’s dead fellows. 

“Move idiot,” he hisses, opening fire at Trau’ug. The bullets ping off his armor like rain off glass. Trau’ug doesn’t even turn toward him. The alien lumbers forward, every step bringing the warlock closer to death. 

“What are you doing?” he snaps, hoping his teammate will wake up and run to cover. Trau’ug is dangerous in close quarters - how does this warlock not have this information? The hunter chucks a grenade at Trau’ug’s feet, praying he can keep the boss busy. He skirts the fringes of the fight, squeezing off a few shots at the smaller enemies surging in Trau’ug’s wake. 

He ducks behind a massive column for a moment to regain his shields and when he pops back out, the warlock is gone. For one brief, beautiful moment, relief floods his veins. Then he sees him. His gun is pointing straight at the ground between his toes and he’s strafing to the left with determined purpose. The warlock drops into a crouch, switches from his assault rifle to a shotgun, then, inexplicably, starts dancing. 

It takes only a matter of seconds for Trau’ug to take advantage, and the warlock is quickly smashed beneath one massive, armored foot. Alone in the world, it’s only a matter of moments before the hunter is overwhelmed. 

Alone, in a ratty one bedroom apartment on his threadbare couch, Bucky Barnes gapes at his TV screen. 

“Wow, pal. What the fuck was that?” he mutters, tapping the guide button on his controller and quickly scrolling over to his friend’s list. He’s so done playing Destiny with randoms. Maybe he can convince a friend to switch over from Overwatch. 

“Look, that was not my fault,” says a deep voice, crackling over the mic. Bucky jumps and clutches at his chest, heart pounding.

“Holy shit, you’re using the in game chat?” Bucky croaks. No one uses Destiny’s in game chat. 

“Uh, yeah?” the other guy says. “I mean, so are you.”

Bucky nods, because, yeah that is absolutely true. “I’m just set to connect automatically. I’ve literally never had another person talk to me.”

“Then what’s the point of it?”

“The point!” Bucky exclaims, incredulous. Where did this guy come from and how does he know literally nothing about Destiny? Like, even fans of the game complain about it constantly. 

“Well why does it exist if no one uses it?” the random asks, sounding genuinely confused. Bucky knows then, beyond a doubt, that this man has not yet had the soul crushing epiphany that Destiny is not fun unless you happen to have 5 best friends with the exact same schedule as yourself. Still, they’re waiting for the game to reload the fight they’d just bombed, so Bucky can take a second to explain.

“Look, there was this whole thing about how the game was going to have open social areas and everyone got all excited about an MMO style console game. Then the game released and there was no in game chat. Not even proximity chat. You had to actually invite someone to join your fireteam and no one wants to invite some fucking rando into their fireteam, pal.”

During the long silence in which Bucky’s fucking rando presumably digests this newfound information, Destiny finally gets its shit together and restarts the round. 

“I still don’t see the point,” the guy says finally. 

“There is no point,” Bucky mutters, channeling his inner Matrix spoon boy. “Just the fucking hype train ruining everything, as per usual.”

“What?”

Bucky rolls his eyes. If this guy didn’t sound like someone under the age of 50, he’d assume he was playing with someone’s grandfather. 

“Nothing. Are you gonna play this time or what?”

“What?” the guy repeats. A regular broken ass record over here. 

“I mean, everything was fine and then Trau’ug showed up and you lost your fucking mind.”

“I don’t know how to play,” the guy says. He sounds much less embarrassed to be caught out by some nameless, faceless dude on multiplayer then Bucky would be in his place. 

“How do you not know how to play?” Bucky yelps, one part incredibly fucking amused and one part so annoyed to be stuck in this hell with this utter noob. If only he hadn’t taken the bet that he could go a month without rage quitting when his friends had been teasing him about it last week. His pride is at stake here. 

“I don’t know!” the random says. “My friend threw his controller at me and told me to play while he made a very important phone call.”

Bucky can hear the eye roll through his headset. He’s pretty impressed, to be honest. 

“It’s just like Halo, kind of,” Bucky supplies, directing his hunter to high ground and doing his best to clear adds before they kill the bumbling warlock. 

“I… don’t know what that is,” he admits eventually. 

Bucky groans. This is a disaster. “What the fuck rock were you living under? Everyone knows Halo.”

“I’m not particularly well versed in video games,” his teammate replies, drier than Bucky’s mouth the morning after a bender. 

“Please tell me you’ve heard of Mario.”

“Red hat, blue overalls?”

“Thank _fuck_ ,” Bucky exhales with intense feeling. They lapse into silence as Bucky continues to clear out enemy aliens and his warlock friend stumbles blindly but somehow manages not to get killed. 

Bucky has mostly cleared the first wave when an enemy gets a lucky shot in and kills him. Talk about a stupid death; he blames the random for throwing off his groove. 

“I’m the last guardian standing,” the other guys announces, far less panicked than most people are when they get that notification. 

“Yep,” Bucky says, popping the p. He sort of hopes it comes across all staticky and awful in the other guy’s headset. He scoops up his phone to check his messages since he’s suddenly found himself with some free time. “I’ve got 30 seconds on my revive, so just stay alive, yeah?”

“But I can revive you, can’t I?”

Bucky would love to respond with something from the “I don’t know, can you?” family, but that seems a little too second grade. He heaves a sigh.

“Sure, but there’re like 10 guys standing on my blueberry so.”

“Blueberry?” the guy mutters quietly, and Bucky bites his tongue to keep from laughing. He’s not going to explain unless he’s outright asked. Him and his friends are probably the only people in the world who call the floating death orb in Destiny a blueberry, especially when the term is usually used to describe other players on the map. Corrupting this innocent soul with incorrect MMO lingo just makes him so happy.

He answers a text from Becca asking him to convince their mom that tattoos are totally acceptable in modern society, then sends one to his mom with a link to an article about the risks of getting a tattoo. He’s too busy snickering to himself to notice the warlock swoop in next to his blueberry and dutifully revive him until the guy speaks up. 

“Is there a limit to how many times you can be revived?” the guy asks. 

“Not that I know of,” Bucky mutters, dragging his eyes up to check the time on his self revive, only to find his guardian already up and ready. “Oh shit, did you revive me?”

“You say that like it was hard to stand next to your… blueberry and hold the X button,” the guy says flatly. The pause before “blueberry” makes Bucky smile. 

“Wow, easy there asshole,” Bucky says gleefully, getting back into the swing of murdering everything that isn’t his teammate. 

“I revive you, so I’m the asshole,” the warlock mutters, but there’s humor in his voice too. This guy is pretty alright for a random. Bucky might even say he’s having fun. 

“What happened to all that, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing, this is my friend’s game, boo hoo’ stuff, huh pal? You revive me once and you get all sassy about it.”

“There are, what? Eight buttons on this controller? It’s not rocket science.”

“Wow,” Bucky laughs, “looks like we got ourselves a fucking genius over here.”

The guy snorts, but another zippy rejoinder isn’t forthcoming, so Bucky lapses into silence. They fall into a good flow clearing adds, and while the random isn’t particularly adept (he seems to want to punch everything in the face and that’s just not a good tactic with a warlock), he’s definitely doing a fair job. Not bad for a Destiny virgin, if Bucky were to be honest. 

They’re waiting for the last wave of adds to spawn in when Bucky next speaks up. 

“So do you have a name? Because you’ve already said this isn’t your account, so I doubt you’ll answer to,” Bucky pauses to squint at the green text bouncing around on the far reaches of his screen, “TheBirdman. Wow, that’s a shitty gamertag. Your friend has terrible taste. You can tell him I said that.”

“Because 360NoScopes is a name to write home about,” he returns immediately. 

“Ouch,” Bucky jokes. “I was like 15 when I made this account ok? I can’t be held accountable for anything I did before the age of 18.”

“Yeah, sure buddy. And I don’t have an account so I don’t really have a name to give you.”

Bucky snorts. “You don’t have any online accounts? Never had a screen name or call sign or anything?”

There’s a long pause, so Bucky focuses on killing aliens. This guy doesn’t know what Halo is, so it shouldn’t really be that surprising that he doesn’t have at least one online handle ready to go. 

“Uh, some of my friends call me Cap, sometimes,” the guy mumbles. He sounds genuinely unsure of the appropriateness of this title. 

“Ok Cap’n Crunch. Most people tend to call me Scopes online,” Bucky says, all false confidence. Sometimes he’d like to go back and wring past Bucky’s nerdy, cocky little neck for coming up with such an embarrassing name. If he wasn’t so broke, he’d spend the money to change it. 

“Ok, Scopes,” Cap replies, barely keeping his laughter in check. “We’re going to face that Traug guy soon, right? Any pointers?”

“Trau’ug,” Bucky corrects immediately. He’s too much of a fucking nerd to let that go. “And I have two pieces of advice for ya, Cap.”

“Okay, hit me.”

They finish clearing the adds and, as before, the momentary quiet is broken by the rumbling earth and Trau’ug appearing from a dark orb overhead. 

“Shoot him a lot, and don’t die.”

With that, Bucky bolts for one of his tried and tested hiding spots and starts sniping. He keeps half an eye on Cap, watching him hustle around the giant boss and take the occasional shot at him. Bucky is almost proud of this guy, thinking back to mess he’d been the last time they’d tried to take Trau’ug down. He might have to send a “gg” message when they inevitably part ways. Even if Cap doesn’t get it, his friend with the shitty gamertag will. 

Bucky lets Cap get the final blow on Trau’ug, even though the guy sounds totally uninterested in the awesomeness factor of it all. He guides Cap down to the treasure room despite this, and they collect their loot with false enthusiasm (Bucky) and obvious disinterest (Cap). When the game brings them to the post game summary page, Bucky realizes with distinct sadness that this is the end of his bizarre adventure with Cap, the Destiny virgin. Well, virgin no more. Bucky’s going to count that as a cherry popped, even if he isn’t strictly responsible. 

“I guess this is the end of our adventure, Cap,” he says, watching the countdown clock. He absolutely _does not_ want Destiny to put him in another round, even if he has had a surprisingly delightful time with this random. 

“Oh,” Cap says, sounding strangely bereft. “It’s been… Well, I’d say fun, but I was taught never to lie.”

“Oh my god,” Bucky blurts, laughing. “You shithead.”

Bucky can hear Cap laughing, too, a low pleasant thrum. He’s struck by another wave of sadness over the idea of never hearing this witty, startlingly sarcastic voice ever again. 

“Hey,” he says impulsively. “If you ever get a gamertag of your own, send me a message, yeah? I’d be happy to carry your ass through another few rounds of this.”

He’s not quite embarrassed. It just feels a little weird, is all, to be sad to lose someone you’ve only known for minutes. Not even a full hour. Just minutes. 

“Yeah,” Cap says. “Yeah, of course.” He sounds kind of sad too, to Bucky, but it’s not like gaming headsets have the best mics. Maybe he’s just trying to politely get rid of Bucky or something. Maybe he’s just tired. Maybe Bucky is way overreacting. 

They don’t get to say anything else, because Destiny is preparing to send them back to matchmaking to find a third (because their original third had left in the very first round and no one had popped up to fill the hole) and Bucky has to scramble to back out before he ends up in another round. He could stay, play with Cap some more, but he can only take so much Prison of Elders. Besides, Becca has probably sent like 2 million texts yelling at him for freaking Mom out about tattoos. 

He’s nearly 30 years old - he can’t just sit around being weirdly sad and overly attached to a random on Xbox Live all day. 

It’s not like that guy is ever going to actually get his own gamertag and seek Bucky out, anyway. No one ever actually befriends randoms from matchmade games. 

Which is why, nearly 3 weeks later, Bucky’s jaw drops when he gets a message from The Capn Crunch. “Hey Scopes,” the message reads, all capitalized and punctuated and everything. “I’m ready to have my ass carried through another few rounds of Prison of Elders.”

Bucky stares at the message for a lifetime, ignoring all the invites to Overwatch his friends are sending, before throwing his head back and laughing.


	2. That wizard came from the moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sat down and wrote an outline for the Steve pov version of this I intend to write someday but then this happened. Idk I hope you have fun? It's mostly Sam and Bucky bantering this time. This might need editing but tbh I'm in the middle of a D&D session so I'll check on it later lmao.

“Oh my god,” Bucky moans over the pre-mission dialogue, ignoring the frantic shushing he gets from Cap for it. “I forgot how awful the campaign missions are.”

Actually, he’d forgotten how bad vanilla Destiny was as a whole, and replaying the campaign is bringing it all back to him. How did he manage to spend so many countless hours playing that garbage before the Taken King expansion was released? An entire year of suffering and he suffered it willingly! 

“Hey, they’re not so bad,” Cap’s friend says, sounding less than convinced. He’s the warlock from before, who’d been so badass in the Prison of Elders until Cap had taken over playing. Bucky’s not entirely sure how to shorten a gamertag like “TheBirdman” down to something he’s not horrifically embarrassed to say (it may be hypocritical, give his own GT, but he’s nothing if not good at ignoring unpleasant truths), so he’s been dutifully not addressing the guy at all. Mentally, he’s just “Cap’s friend” and that’s proven good enough so far. 

“They’re _so_ boring,” Bucky insists. “You can’t deny it, man.”

“Some of them are pretty ok, aren’t they?”

“They’re all ‘go here, hold X, kill a million waves of the increasingly obnoxious enemies.’”

“I mean,” Cap’s friend mutters, “you’re basically describing the whole game.”

“Could you two stop talking,” Cap growls. Bucky snaps to attention because _oh_ , that is a good voice. A very good voice. “I can’t understand the story because you keep talking over everything.”

“Man,” Cap’s friend starts, but he drops into silence. Bucky can understand that. It’s hard to tell someone who spent half an hour in a character creator that should max out at 5 minutes tops that there _isn’t_ a story to follow. No one wants to crush the spirit of such a pure, innocent soul. Especially a pure, innocent soul with a voice like that. Bucky makes a mental note to get Cap riled up more often.

“It’s not an uncommon phenomenon,” Bucky finds himself saying as their characters pop into the mission start point. 

“What?” Cap asks, and on screen his little baby titan turns as if to address Bucky’s hunter. Bucky has to bite back a giggle, ridiculously charmed, and clears his throat. 

“Not understanding the story,” he says. “I don’t think Bungie even understands the story, and they’re the ones who made it.”

“They sort of had a thing going with Taken King.”

“I have no idea what either of you are talking about,” Cap mutters, and then his titan is trotting off, presumably to punch things in the face. Bucky and Cap’s friend leave him to it. He’ll be fine. Probably.

“Taken King started strong,” Bucky agrees, gesticulating wildly despite the fact that no one can see him. “I was really looking forward to the fallout with the Awoken after Mara Sov’s thing but all we got was Petra Venj being kind of sad.”

“Hey now, don’t you speak ill of Petra. She’s a badass and you should love her.”

“Variks is definitely better.”

“I cannot believe you just said that,” Cap’s friend whines. 

“Got a thing for strong willed ladies, huh?” Bucky smirks. 

“He definitely does,” Cap chimes in, fond teasing clear in his voice. Cap’s friend splutters and the two of them descend into a friendly verbal sparring match. Bucky laughs at their shenanigans, but his heart isn’t really in it. These people are obviously close and Bucky clearly isn’t a part of that. It’s not jealousy, but something like an awareness of his status as an outsider. They’re cool, he likes them, but he’s just a voice in their headsets. 

“Scopes, you’re the tie breaker,” Cap’s friend says and Bucky shakes off the sudden mood. 

“What?”

“A woman who can kill you with one hand - hot or not?” Cap’s friend asks. It sounds like an old discussion; a worn, comfortable argument between friends. 

“How is that even a question?” Bucky laughs. “Hot, of course.”

“Ha! Told you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Cap mutters. 

“What?” Bucky teases, “Scared of women who know what they want?”

He hopes the answer is no. He’s played with douchey dudebros with less than desirable opinions on genders other than their own, and while it doesn’t really immediately affect him, it does make him distinctly uncomfortable. He’s really been having fun with these guys, too, so he hopes they’re not secretly disgusting. 

“Hardly,” Cap snorts, a gravity behind his words that suggests a story, but he changes the subject before anyone can bring it up. “Where am I supposed to go from here?”

“Yeah, I guess we should actually help huh?” Cap’s friend chuckles, and on screen his warlock hops on his sparrow and the hover bike zips across the map. 

“Where are you now?” Bucky asks, jumping on his own sparrow and heading for the objective marker. 

“Um, a big field full of crashed planes.”

“Yeah, the Mothyards,” Bucky says with a nod. “You wanna get to that big building up on the hill.”

On their sparrows, they catch up to Cap in no time and progress into a dark, broken down building full of enemies. Aside from a few gentle pointers for Cap, they clear the next few rooms without much talking. It’s a little awkward, as far as Bucky can tell, but he’s not entirely sure why. Unless there was something about their strong woman conversation that Bucky doesn’t know?

They enter a new room that Bucky instantly recognizes and, hoping to crack the tension, he asks, “Is this where we meet the wizard?”

Cap’s friend makes an affirmative sound, and Bucky grins.

“My favorite line in the entire game happens here!”

“What line?” Cap asks.

“Just listen,” Bucky says, anticipation tingling in his chest. He _really_ loves this stupid line of dialogue.

“Man,” Cap’s friend starts, and Bucky can already feel the disappointment settling in. This guy is real good at setting people up for less than pleasant news. “If it’s the line I think it is, you’re not gonna hear it. They took it out after the beta.”

“What?” Bucky exclaims, collapsing back on his couch. “That’s so lame.”

“What was the line?” Cap asks. 

“That wizard came from the moon,” Bucky sighs. 

Into the silence that follows, Cap tentatively asks, “Was that the line?”

“Yes,” Bucky whines, barely paying attention to what his hunter is doing on screen. “It was so stupid and I loved it so much. I even have the t-shirt.”

His admission is followed by the loveliest sound Bucky’s ever heard; a low, breathy giggle. He perks up, feeling an answering smile turning the corners of his lips. Cap’s laughter is followed by his friend, a rich, barking laugh. In the face of that, Bucky has to laugh too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This whole au is actually a rant about Destiny cleverly disguised as a fanfic.


	3. And please… keep this quiet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This whole chapter is me ranting about factions I'm so sorry. Also I swear I have nothing against Overwatch - I'm just jealous that all my friends have it and I don't. I'm probably going to start bringing in actual events from MCU eventually and I just want you to know now that the dates are so not going to line up. Please just let me handwave them and be on my way.

Bucky is in the kitchen, waiting for the microwave to finish reheating his pizza and tapping his controller against the countertop when he hears an alert bloop in his headphones. He abandons his pathetic dinner and trots into the living room, bringing up the Xbox guide to see what the notification was. He’s been sort of waiting for someone to invite him to _something_ , but his friends have a full team in Overwatch so he’s been left on the bench. He flicks the joystick to the left and brings up the message. 

Cap is online. Bucky feels a grin stealing across his face. He sends a party invite and hurries back to his kitchen to collect his greasy pile of leftover pizza. He’s on his way back, plate balanced on his right hand, when he hears another mic pop on in his party. 

“Hey,” Bucky says gleefully, setting his plate on the cushion beside him. 

“Hello,” Cap replies, a little quiet. Subdued maybe. It’s Wednesday though, and Bucky understands that bone deep weariness of hump day. He resolves to cheer him up.

“Tough day?” Bucky asks, casually scrolling down to Destiny but waiting to start it up. 

Cap hums agreeably, but doesn’t offer anything further. 

“Hey, you gonna play Destiny?”

“I guess.”

“I was thinking about hopping on, if you want some company,” Bucky offers casually. He’s not really sure what he’ll do if Cap isn’t interested in his company, to be honest. Cry into his pizza maybe.

“You don’t have to,” Cap says quickly. “I know it’s boring playing the easy missions with me.”

“Yeah, no way pal,” Bucky says with finality. “I’m not going to let you suffer these missions alone.”

“Well,” Cap pauses for a few breaths, then finishes quietly, “thank you.”

There’s something heavy about it, a deep unspoken emotion. Bucky’s leg starts jittering nervously. Emotions are scary.

“No problem, bud,” he chirps, loud and far too enthusiastic. He winces at himself. Time to throw himself into the game with abandon and hope all this weirdness passes quickly. It takes Destiny several minutes to load up, and the thick silence between them holds throughout. He’s dangerously close to saying something fucking stupid (probably something like “your voice is so dreamy and I kind of cry about it sometimes when I’m feeling lonely”), so he picks up his slowly congealing pizza and shoves it into his mouth. 

He gets grease everywhere and he has to chew painfully slow to keep his mic from picking up the sound, but at least he can’t talk. Anything that saves him from sounding like a complete lunatic to Cap is a win. 

“Do you need an invite? Or,” Cap trails off, sounding uncertain. 

Bucky gulps down a mouthful of pizza and chokes out, “No, no. I’ll join your fireteam. You should stop at the Tower for bounties and stuff.”

He stares at his grease covered fingers with disgust and, grimacing, wipes them on his pant legs. His fingers still feel gross, but at least they don’t leave streaks of oil on his controller where he grips it. Nothing irks him quite so much as finger gunk on his controller. Ugh. 

He turns his attention to the screen, opening the roster page and selecting Cap’s GT so he can join up with him. It takes the game a minute, so Bucky pulls up the equipment management app on his phone. There’s no real point to it, but it’s something to do while he’s waiting. As he flicks through the app, he spies the new Dead Orbit ship he’d earned last time he played, and a question pops into his head.

“Hey, have you chosen a faction yet?”

“No,” Cap says slowly and perhaps a touch confused. “What does that even mean?”

Bucky focuses on his TV, turning the camera until he can see Cap’s GT among all the other players’ names hovering around on the Tower. He sprints toward him as he starts explaining. 

“They’re just like these groups you can join and you earn points for doing stuff once you’ve pledged to them. You get cool shit when you rank up.”

“Why have I not heard about this sooner?” Cap asks. His titan is standing before the Cryptarch, the ellipses floating over his head making it clear he’s in his menu screen. 

“I don’t know,” Bucky mutters eventually. “I don’t remember the beginning of the game honestly so I can’t remember how I found out about the factions.”

Cap’s titan turns suddenly, coming to stop before Bucky’s hunter and waving. Bucky smirks - he’ll take the credit for teaching Cap all the emotes, thanks - and taps the D-pad to make his hunter dance. Cap dances back almost immediately. 

“So what are they? The factions.”

“You’ve got Dead Orbit, New Monarchy, and,” Bucky sighs, suppressing a shudder, “Future War Cult. It literally doesn’t matter which one you pick”

“Which one did you pick?” Cap asks.

“Dead Orbit,” Bucky replies smugly. The _best_ faction. “At rank 3 you can buy one of the best scout rifles in the entire game and the color scheme is attractive.”

“But that doesn’t _mean_ anything,” Cap grumbles. “Is there information in the game about them?”

“Sure,” Bucky says, shrugging at his TV screen like it might reply to him. “Short version: New Monarchy wants to return the world to its Golden Age by putting a new king on the throne. Future War Cult believes war is inevitable and we should be prepared for it. Dead Orbit believes Earth is a lost cause and we should build fleet to get the hell out of here.”  


“How do you join up?”

“You just pledge to the vendor here on the Tower. I’ll show you where they are.”

Bucky dutifully leads Cap around the Tower, first to Executor Hideo because New Monarchy had to be on the complete opposite side of the map from the other two, then to Arach Jalaal of Dead Orbit and Lakshmi-2 of Future War Cult. He listens to Cap hem and haw about the thin, watery backstories presented by each vendor and carefully tries to steer him toward the correct path. 

“Ok so New Monarchy has a decent auto rifle and heavy machine gun, and Future War Cult has a good pulse rifle and fusion rifle, but Dead Orbit has Hung Jury.”

“Hung Jury does not actually sound like a good thing,” Cap mutters absently. Bucky assumes he’s googling faction breakdowns. There are probably like 200 in existence by now. 

“It’s a scout rifle. It’s so good, man. Like it’s rolls are fantastic.”

“Rolls?” Cap sounds 100% lost. It’s goddamn adorable, and Bucky resents it. 

“Yeah, you know. The perks each gun has? Sometimes you can get two of the same gun with different perks. Two different rolls.”

“Right,” Cap says, flat and skeptical. 

“So Hung Jury is definitely important. The armor is,” Bucky pauses to think of a tactful way to say utterly pointless, “not that big a deal, really. Each faction’s armor boosts something a little different, but it doesn’t matter that much. No one really runs around in full faction armor ever.”

“You know, you aren’t really selling me on the idea of factions.”

Bucky cracks a laugh at Cap’s dry tone. “Look, you get cool stuff, I promise. Just know that if you pick Future War Cult, your armor is going to be ugly and look bad with shaders and I’m going to cry.”

“But why do they have backstories if the stories don’t matter?”

“We’ve been over this, pal,” Bucky says gently. “Destiny’s story is garbage and you should ignore it, for the most part.”

It’s not exactly true. Mostly, Destiny’s story had to be scrapped a year before launch and the team had to scramble to piece together something viable. It’s not pretty and most of the story is text only available online, so unless Cap is a super lore nerd, it’s easier to redirect him. 

“I don’t know,” Cap mumbles pensively. “I mean, you play a hunter, so it makes sense for you to choose Dead Orbit. Hunters sound like the kind of folks who’d abandon a fight if it got too tough.”

_Oh_. Oh, it’s on. No one comes in to Bucky’s life and uses the game mythos to call his character a quitter. If Cap wants to go full super nerd, Bucky is more than ready to rise to that challenge. He hasn’t spent days of his life reading every tidbit of information about Destiny’s universe for nothing. 

“Look pal, if you want me to rant about the lore for the next 3 days, you’re definitely on the right track.”

“Wow, only 3 days?” Cap sounds entirely too smug but Bucky doesn’t get a chance to defend himself or his imaginary thesis on Destiny. “So tell me why Future War Cult is a bad choice. From a story perspective, not color scheme.”

“Spoken like a man who doesn’t know or care about color matching his wardrobe,” Bucky teases. He’s surprised by Cap’s bark of laughter, but pleased by the warmth in his voice when he replies.

“You could definitely say something about the colors of my wardrobe.”

Bucky doesn’t understand the joke (maybe he works somewhere with a bad uniform? Or he could be colorblind??) but he doesn’t want to pry either. He casts his mind about for everything he knows about Future War Cult.

“Ok, so. There were like archaeological findings that imply the cult existed like way before the guardians and the Tower and all that. The founder was some PhD and her team was doing these experiments with a Vex device or something. Apparently they could see how fucked the future was, but they also mostly went crazy.”

“So Future War Cult because they’ve seen there will be a war.”

“Yeah, and a war we’re set to lose, apparently. They think there’s no way to escape the war, whether they stay or run.”

“So they think Dead Orbit is stupid,” Cap says, barely keeping a laugh in check. 

“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up.”

“Don’t worry, I am.”

“Right so. Future War Cult also has this thing where they’re obsessed with fate and whether you can really change history or not.”

Cap hums thoughtfully. “And your opinion on them? Ignoring the colors.”

Bucky purses his lips, trying to think about the faction from the story perspective.

“I guess… I can agree with their belief in the war and being ready for the war, given how hostile the universe is. But their methods are pretty sketchy? And I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable supporting them.”

Bucky would feel embarrassed about being this involved in the lore (especially when he’s always talking shit about the lack of story), but Cap seems interested in it. It’s kind of nice, actually, to have someone willing to dig this deep into the backstory. Most of Bucky’s friends think it’s hilarious he’s so invested. 

“You know, Future War Cult really reminds me of the place I work at,” Steve says thoughtfully. Bucky rocks back on his couch, blinking at his screen. 

“That’s not shifty or anything,” he laughs weakly. Where the fuck does this guy work?

“Uh, I just. I mean, they say one thing but they don’t really like to come clean about how they’re doing things,” Cap scrambles. 

“Wow, ok, my biggest worry about my place of employment is how long the microwave in the breakroom is gonna stay broken,” Bucky laughs, ignoring the slightly awkward turn in the conversation. 

“Yeah, I can see how that would be a serious cause for concern,” Cap says, obviously straining for lightheartedness. 

“Right, so. Do you need the super nerdy breakdowns of Dead Orbit and New Monarchy too? Or are you just hellbent on making me cry?”

“You know,” Cap chuckles, “all things considered, I don’t make grown men cry that often and it might be worth my time.”

“That’s harsh, man.”

“That, and I agree with your opinion. Their goals are admirable, even if their methods are questionable.”

“The end justifies the means?”

“No,” Cap says firmly. “But ignoring them isn’t going to make them stop. You can’t change a system by pretending it isn’t there.”

“This is getting really heavy man. I don’t remember signing up for Philosophy 101.”

“Sorry, I’m not trying to preach at you or anything,” Cap says. It sounds like this is one of those things his friends get after him for on a regular basis. He gets it - his friends are always telling him to stop losing his cool every time a random asshole crops up. Bucky’s still not convinced shitty people don’t deserve a beating, which is why he’s so used to hearing about it. 

“Nah, don’t worry about it. It sounds like a well thought out idea.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Cap laughs quietly. Abruptly changing the subject, he adds, “So you got any tissues ready?”

“Oh my god, no,” Bucky whines. “You’re gonna do it. You’re gonna join the worst faction.”

“Just for you,” Cap says, cloyingly sweet. 

Bucky makes gagging noises, trying not to crack up. “I can’t believe this. You’re the worst.”

“I’ll make sure to pick the most horrendous color combinations for you.”

“You’re an asshole,” Bucky states calmly. 

“But you keep coming back anyway.”

_Because you’re fucking awesome and I want to talk to you all the time_ Bucky wants to say. He doesn’t. Instead, he says, “Well someone needs to carry your ass through this game.”

“I appreciate your sacrifice,” Cap says sarcastically. Bucky can practically see the sardonic salute. 

“Alright you prick. Are we gonna play sometime today, or not?”

“Oh, of course your highness. So sorry to make you wait.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says with a smile, as the game politely informs him his fireteam leader is taking him to orbit, “you can make it up to me later.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to say thank you to everyone leaving kudos and comments! I really appreciate it. <3
> 
> FWC for life, yo. 
> 
> Bucky's reaction to FWC is based entirely on my friend who bemoans my hideous armor+shader choices all the time. If you want to judge for yourself, I took some pictures of my titan in her FWC armor. Left most is without shader and the other 3 are shaders I happened to have in my inventory at the moment. 
> 
>  


	4. The Heart of the Black Garden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. This chapter kicked my ass the whole time and laughed while it was doing it. I'm sorry if it's choppy and gross. 
> 
> 2\. I know nothing about New York. Research says MCU!Steve grew up in DUMBO (does it need to be all caps? The jury is out on this), which was not a very nice place in the early 20th century. Now it's one of the nicer (and more expensive) parts of Brooklyn. Go figure. I picked Bucky's neighborhoods entirely on the names I liked. Fight me. Shout out to Indiana, the birthplace of 616!Bucky. 
> 
> 3\. So I didn't entirely think this through when I started writing it because I wanted Steve to be in DC and to already know Sam but I didn't want to change the timeline too much. Unfortunately TWS is set vaguely in early 2014 and Destiny wasn't even released until Sept. 2014. The Taken King was even later, in Sept. 2015, but I'm gonna bring up AoU at some point anyway. So I fucked up. My bad. Civil War probably won't come into play at all. Mostly because that's a whole lot of characters to write and I'm bad with ensembles. 
> 
> As it stands, in this particular story, the whole Insight helicarrier thing did happen, just minus the Winter Soldier part. Also, probably in large part because there was no Winter Soldier who's secret identity turns out to be Steve's old BFF, Shield isn't completely taken apart at the end. Because fuck it, I wanted Steve to still be with Shield. He doesn't fucking trust them, but he's there. Probably giving everyone the side eye and being Very Disapproving™. Also Nat's around somewhere. She'll probably show up eventually.

“Oh _wow_ ,” Cap breathes and Bucky has to fight the urge to fan himself. “This is so beautiful.”

 _You’re so beautiful_ Bucky thinks, and wants to slap himself for it. Just because a guy with a hot voice gushes about how pretty a game is. For shame. 

“Havin’ a moment there, huh?” Cap’s friend chuckles. (BirdMan though. Bucky just _cannot_.) “Enjoy it now before we get to the assholes at the end.”

“It’s not so bad,” Bucky forces himself to refocus. “You can one-man this boss fight.”

“Look at the sky,” Cap continues, ignoring them through what sounds like sheer force of will. Bucky turns his hunter toward the ravine, staring out at the Black Garden like Cap. He peers at the green tinged sky, the ravine extending out to the horizon, and the fog hanging against blocks of black rock. Meh. 

“Man, while you are droolin’ over the pretty colors, Sniper Elite here and I are gonna deal with these hobgoblins trying to murder us.”

“Excuse me,” Bucky cracks, grinning despite himself, “maybe I wanna stand here with Cap and enjoy the fucking scenery.”

“I bet you do,” Cap’s friend mutters lowly. Bucky can feel himself being judged. He almost feels bad about it. 

“Fine,” he groans. “Move aside, Quailman. I’ll deal with this.”

“You say that like an insult, but I know you’re just jealous.”

“If you want to wear your tighty whities outside of your pants, I won’t stop you,” Bucky fires back. 

“I can understand you wanting to see what I’ve got going on under these pants. I’m a fine looking gentleman.”

“You two need a room?” Cap asks, his titan clomping past them and smashing one solid fist into the nearest robot’s face. 

Bucky sputters, choking back the immediate denial. Not because he dislikes the implication - Bucky’s fairly comfortable with his sexuality thanks very much - but because he would very much like to get a room with _Cap_. His thirst is so real.

“Aw, did we take you away from the view?” his friend teases. 

“I took a screencap,” Cap replies flatly. 

“Oh my god, you learned how to take screencaps? I’m so proud of you, son.”

“Actually, Scopes taught me,” Cap says. Despite the use of his utterly embarrassing gamertag, Bucky puffs up at the warmth in Cap’s voice. 

“Anytime, old man,” Bucky says with much more affection in his voice than he’d meant to put there. Shit.

Cap’s voice is soft and sweet when he answers, “I appreciate it.”

Oh fuck. Bucky is so fucked. He’s got it so bad for a goddamn voice. 

Bucky laments his regrettable life choices as they continue through the mission. They fall into relative silence as they focus, only speaking to offer advice or point out a particularly difficult enemy. It’s not until the cutscene before the final boss starts playing that Bird Brain speaks up again. 

“Hey Cap, you up for pizza tonight?”

“Are you buying?” After figuring out that he was never going to get perfect silence during cutscenes, Cap had turned his subtitles on. He hadn’t even needed help navigating the menus; Bucky probably hadn’t felt that proud of another person since Becca graduated high school. 

“Are you gonna complain?” 

There’s a long moment of silence wherein Bucky can practically hear the silent argument his teammates are having. 

“How can you complain about free pizza?” Bucky breaks them up. He’s a bro like that. Also, how can anyone complain about free pizza?

“You can take the boy out of New York,” Cap’s friend says grandly, “but you can’t get the boy a goddamn pizza unless it’s New York style.”

Bucky doesn’t quite squeal, but it’s a close thing. 

“You’re from New York?” He winces at the 27 exclamation points he can hear in his fucking voice. Way to be cool, Barnes. 

“Yeah, we both are,” Cap says brightly. 

“Really?” Bucky asks excitedly. It’s always fun meeting other people from his home city.

“I’m from Harlem,” Thirdwheel McBirdface says, “but it’s been a good long while since I lived there.”

Manhattan. It all makes sense now. 

The cutscene ends, and they get to work killing enemies, but Bucky can’t let the conversation die here. He needs to know what part of New York Cap is from. Really, as long as he doesn’t say Staten Island, Bucky’s cool.

“And you, Cap?” Bucky asks. 

“Brooklyn,” Cap announces with obvious pride. 

This time he doesn’t manage to hold it in. 

“Me too!” he squeaks. “Grew up on the south side of Bed-Stuy.”

Cap hums agreeably. “I saw they were cleaning up parts of Bed-Stuy last time I was there. Looks a lot different from when I was a kid.”

“I bet it does,” Pigeon Boy says with a laugh, prompting a chuckle from Cap. Bucky mulls this over for a moment. Yeah, the gentrification of Bed-Stuy has definitely changed it and the demolition of historic landmarks sucks, but the changes aren’t that drastic. It’s still mostly recognizable - there’s just a bunch of shitty boutiques where brownstones used to be. Bucky had spent a lot of time shuddering at the new storefronts last time he’d visited his old stomping ground. 

“The east side is still pretty untouched,” Bucky offers. 

“It’d probably stay that way, if the people living there had anything to say about it,” Cap says. 

“Definitely,” Bucky huffs as he struggles with a particularly obnoxious group of goblins.

“Do you still live in Bed-Stuy?” Cap asks, his titan looking tiny and defiant before the massive Eschaton Mind trying to stomp him to death. Judging by the casual tone of his voice, Cap is decidedly unconcerned. 

“Nah, I’m in Bensonhurst now,” Bucky says. He’s not really worried about giving away his location to a couple of dudes on the internet. Even narrowing things down to his neighborhood, finding him would still be like finding a needle in a haystack. Besides, maybe if he throws around enough places, Cap will finally spill the beans on where he’s from. 

“Bensonhurst is pretty nice, isn’t it?” Cap’s friend says. 

“It’s all right,” Bucky shrugs. “I’m reasonably sure I won’t be mugged on the street and, more importantly, I can afford it.”

“Priorities,” Cap agrees. “Affordability is vital.”

Bucky takes the opportunity, as weak as it is, to poke his nose in Cap’s business.

“Spoken like a true broke Brooklynite,” Bucky says, wincing at the dumb line he knows his stupid mouth is about to spit out. “You must have lived somewhere a bit rough too.”

Bird Boy barks a laugh. “Cap, please just tell him where you grew up before he hurts himself.”

The Eschaton Mind collapses under the purple tinted energy Birdy’s warlock hurls at it, and the Imminent Mind slowly jerks to life. They turn to the new robot nonchalantly and Bucky nearly chews his own lip off waiting for Cap to answer his unspoken question.

“Well, it was really rough once upon a time,” Cap says, voice soft and a bit distant. Nostalgic, maybe? Bucky can’t quite pin down the emotion. “I grew up in DUMBO.”

Bucky chokes on his surprise, whiffing his grenade like a fucking noob, so it sails harmlessly past the Imminent Mind and explodes on an empty stretch of ground. DUMBO is one of the nicest, and unsurprisingly one of the most costly, places in Brooklyn. So there’s no way Cap grew up rough unless he’s secretly 100 years old. 

If he is 100 years old, Bucky needs to congratulate him on his fucking everything. The coolest, most attractive sounding grandpa Bucky’s ever lusted after. 

“DUMBO, huh?” Bucky says, congratulating himself on not sounding like a prepubescent boy. “That’s practically Manhattan.”

“Oh here we go,” Cap’s friend murmurs, sounding about ready to pop himself a bag of popcorn. 

“I can’t believe you could say that. To me. A fellow Brooklynite. I’m insulted,” Cap says, flat and jokingly disgusted. 

“Just a bridge apart,” Bucky teases. So he’s playing with a guy who probably grew up in a lot better situation than he did, no big. Bucky’s dealt with a lot of people from much nicer backgrounds than his. And it’s not like he has to worry about this impacting their relationship because their relationship only exists in Bucky’s late night, one handed fantasies. 

Bucky taps both bumpers to activate his super, and fires three high powered golden gun rounds into the Imminent Mind. It goes up in a wisp of flame, and the Primeval Mind steps in to take its place. 

“Well I, for one, like Manhattan,” Birb says. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Cap sighs. “Harlem’s so great, I’ve heard.”

“Go Yankees,” Cap’s friend chirps gleefully. Cap responds with a long, low groan that Bucky has every intention of reviewing at a later date. 

“You don’t like the Yankees?” Bucky asks. 

“No,” Cap grumbles petulantly. “Do you?”

“Uh, the Mets never win?” Bucky ends up asking, like he’s trying for the correct answer on a test. When Cap tsks sharply, Bucky thinks maybe he got the answer wrong. 

“Our boy here is still loyal to the Dodgers,” Feather Brain says cheerily. His warlock lobs a grenade at the Primeval Mind’s face and ducks back into cover. 

“The Dodgers?” Bucky yelps, incredulous. The Dodgers abandoned Brooklyn sometime in the 1950’s. There’s fan loyalty and then there’s fan _loyalty_. Bucky’s not sure if he’s impressed or concerned.

“They win more than the Mets,” Cap says, obviously mocking Bucky. Bucky would be insulted, except Cap decides right then to pull out his rocket launcher and blow Primeval Mind to tiny bits. 

“Hey, we did it!” Bucky cheers. “Now I never have to play the vanilla campaign ever again!”

They run around the map collecting loot and then congregate toward the middle, starting their ritual endgame dance crew until the mission end clock runs to zero. As the game shuffles them through the rewards page and into the ending cutscene, Cap’s friend excuses himself.

“I’m gonna go order pizza. I’ll bring it over to your place in a bit, okay Cap?”

“Yeah, sounds good,” Cap mumbles distractedly. He’s probably trying to make some sort of sense out of the closing scene in the game. Bucky knows first hand that it’s a useless endeavor, subtitles or not. 

“All right, then I’ll leave you with this Hawkeye wannabe. See ya’ll later.”

“I am way cooler than Hawkeye,” Bucky cries, hoping Cap’s friend heard him before taking his headset off. The notification informing them he’s left their party pops up, so Bucky will never know. 

“Don’t worry,” Cap says as the cutscene wraps up. “You’re much cooler than Hawkeye.”

“Don’t you patronize me, pal.”

“I’d only be patronizing you if I said you’re cooler than Black Widow.”

“Hey, don’t say that until you’ve seen me in a leather bodysuit man. You might change your mind.”

Cap laughs, a rich hearty sound, but Bucky is burning scarlet with embarrassment. Why must his brain betray him like this?

“I’m sure you pull off the black leather look wonderfully,” Cap agrees easily. 

Bucky laughs, too loud and completely fake but his brain is probably leaking out of his ears at the very thought of Cap and lots of black leather, so it’s allowed. What follows is a silence more uncomfortable than any Bucky has ever had to suffer through. 

Cap clears his throat. “So, what do we do now?”

“Um, so we need to go back to the Tower because you have a bunch of new side quests to pick up. Then we can work on those, or start on the Taken King campaign.”

“So, to the Tower?” 

“Yep,” Bucky chirps, willing away the confusing mix of embarrassment and lust. How did this become his life. What terrible thing did he do in a past life to deserve this gentle suffering. 

They arrive on the Tower, and Cap hurries off to deal with all the little green icons Bucky imagines are on his screen. Bucky doesn’t have much reason to be on the Tower, so instead he lets his mind wander. 

“Have you always lived in Brooklyn?” Cap asks, breaking the silence. 

“For the most part, yeah,” Bucky replies. “I went to college in Indiana though.”

“Indiana? How was that?”

“It’s okay. I was in Indianapolis, so it wasn’t that drastic a change.”

“I hear there’s a lot of corn out there.”

“Oh god yes,” Bucky snorts. “When I did venture away from the city, it was just endless fields of corn.”

Cap laughs warmly. “I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the wilderness, but I’m definitely a city boy at heart.”

Bucky hums in agreement. 

"So,” Bucky drags out the sound, “you grew up in DUMBO but it sounds like you haven’t spent much time there lately. Where'd you end up?"

The sound Cap makes crackles through his mediocre microphone but it sounds a bit uncomfortable nonetheless. 

"I mean," Bucky backpedals quickly, "if it's not asking too much. I'm not trying to pry or anything."

He focuses on getting his Tower errands done - decrypting loot, buying supplies, visiting with Cayde just to listen to the sweet, dulcet tones of Nathan Fillion's voice. With Ikora Rey standing just across the table, he can hear Gina Torres as well, and it's almost like hanging out on the Serenity with Captain Mal and Zoe. Bucky casts a mournful eye on his Firefly boxset. Oh the things that could have been. 

"Have you ever seen Firefly?" Bucky asks. Even though it's very important to note which friends have good taste and which do not, Bucky knows he's only asking now to break the slight awkwardness.

"Can't say I have," Cap replies evenly. He's working his way down into the Vanguard room where Bucky is hanging out. Pretty much every NPC around wants to throw a bunch of missions at him. Bucky's hunter sits on the table in front of Cayde and waits. 

"You should look it up sometime. It's really good."

"What's it about?" Cap's titan comes trotting down the long hall, probably to talk to Zavala down at the end of the table. The titan vanguard is staring disapprovingly, probably because Bucky (and just about everyone else with the game) thinks it's okay to jump all over the table. Cap, unsurprisingly, walks around like the respectable guy he is. 

"It's like... cowboys in space, maybe? It's a little ridiculous but very heartfelt, I think."

Cap hums, walking down the length of the table to talk to Ikora next. "I'll put it on the list."

"You have a list?"

"Yeah, I missed a lot. I was... gone for a while."

"That's not ominous," Bucky mutters under his breath. His mic must pick it up fine anyway, because Cap answers.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to sound grim. I was in the army and there's a lot I need to catch up on."

"Oh," Bucky says dumbly. Great work, Barnes. Really. Just, so smooth. While Cap sidles around the table to hit up Cayde, Bucky mentally berates himself.

"I can hear you beating yourself up from here," Cap teases. It's a little weak, but Bucky appreciates the effort anyway. "You didn't do anything wrong. It's not going to kill me to talk about it."

Bucky snorts, because _yeah_ okay pal. Maybe if Cap didn't sound so much like he wanted to talk about literally anything else, Bucky would believe him. He's about to say as much, when a thought strikes him and he can't stop himself from blurting out, "wait so are you actually a captain?"

"I was," Cap chuckles. "I'm not sure I really fit into the military hierarchy anymore."

"Did you get discharged?"

Cap hums, not entirely convincingly, but Bucky thinks it's probably better not to push any further today than he already has. 

"Do you think we have time to do any of these quests before pizza gets here?"

Bucky can roll with abrupt topic changes.

"Doesn't someone want you to just run a bunch of patrols?"

The ellipses appear over the titan's head, scrolling through his menus to find all his current quest lines. 

"Yeah, I guess I'm supposed to do all the different types of patrol missions," Cap says after a moment.

"We can just do that then," Bucky nods. "Pick your planet, I'm good with anything."

"I kinda like Mars," Cap says, as the game helpfully informs him his fireteam leader is taking him to orbit. 

"Oh god, really?" After all the oohing and awing Cap had done at the beautiful environment on Venus, Bucky had expected to go there. Mars is just... red. Sandy. Full of obnoxious Cabal. Not Bucky's idea of a good time. 

"Yeah, and I know how much you actually hate Mars."

"So you're doing this just to punish me? What'd I ever do to you man," Bucky jokes. Mars isn't that bad - at least it's not the moon. 

When the game deposits them up on a deep red sandy hill, Bucky immediately rushes forward to grab the patrol beacon tucked behind a scraggly tree. He mostly ignores the Cryptarch asking them to kill certain enemies and collect item drops, opting to spawn his sparrow and ride through the dunes to the first cluster of Cabal on the planet. Cap follows after him. 

They’re clearing out the enemies when Cap suddenly speaks up. 

“After the army, I ended up in New York again, but it just wasn’t the same. I got a job offer in DC, so I left. It was better than staying in New York and feeling like everything was wrong.”

Bucky has no idea what to say to that. _Sorry man, that sucks?_ Bucky’s not great at sensitivity. 

“How do you like DC?” That seems like a safe next step in the conversation. 

“It’s all right. Very different from New York.”

“Were you there when Shield collapsed on itself?” Bucky asks. It’d been huge news for a while, and there’d been a really hot picture of Captain America and Black Widow being bad ass circulating. 

“Yeah,” Cap says slowly. “I was around.”

“Did you know anyone involved?” Bucky tries for gentle. He’s curious but he doesn’t want to hit a sore spot either. 

“Mmm, a few people. None of my friends were hurt though.”

Bucky exhales quietly. “That’s good. I’m glad.”

“Yeah, me too,” Cap agrees, before forcibly moving the conversation again. Bucky feels like he’s setting a record for making someone else uncomfortable today. “What does the icon that looks a bit like a steering wheel mean?”

“Uh, is that a scan mission? Or survey? I don’t remember. It’s a 'go to this place and stand there a second' mission.”

Cap accepts the mission and they jump on their sparrows to head toward the marker. Bucky, hoping to make up for the discomfort his questioning had caused Cap, babbles about the game. He’s midway through discussing the Cabal and their life philosophy when there’s a loud knocking through Cap’s headphones. 

“Pizza!” Cap whoops, presumably leaping to his feet and running to get his door. Bucky hears the commotion and the familiar voice of BirdMan chatting with Cap. 

“Aw, is that Scopes on there? Tell him I say hi and his name is stupid.”

“I can hear you,” Bucky retorts, even though Cap is most likely the only one who can hear him. 

“He says he can hear you,” Cap laughs. He’s joined by his friend, but the sound is fading, like Cap is walking away. 

“I guess this means you’re leaving,” Bucky says, trying not to sound disappointed. He’d abandon Cap if someone showed up at his door with free pizza, so it’s only fair. 

“Yeah, thanks for playing with me.”

Bucky snorts. “No problem man.”

The only problem is Bucky’s raging lust, and no one needs to know about that. 

“I guess I’ll talk to you later then,” Cap says, but his voice rises like it’s a question.

“Yeah of course,” Bucky says and, purely on a whim adds, “hey, you can call me Bucky, by the way. So we can all stop acknowledging my awful GT.”

“Bucky?” Cap sounds like he’s 2 seconds away from bursting into laughter and Bucky groans. 

“Oh my god, man, it’s a nickname. You really gonna bust my balls like this? Christ.” He knows his nickname is a little silly okay. He’s long accepted the teasing and besides, Cap teasing him about it is kinda nice. Good. Bucky’s completely okay with it. 

“Sorry,” Cap must be grinning like a fucking idiot if his voice is anything to go by, “I don’t make the rules, _Bucky_.”

“Fuck you too pal,” Bucky laughs. “Go eat your goddamn pizza and leave me alone.”

“Yes sir.”

“Bye Cap.”

“Bye Buck.”

 _Oh fuck_. Bucky’s so screwed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to [seregil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seregil) for prodding me along. It'd take a lot longer for me to write this without her help! <3


	5. Fire burns without thought

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok first of all who rec'd this on tumblr. I saw it. I know one of you did it. >_>
> 
> When I sat down to write this chapter, I realized I never really thought about how the middle was going to go. I had the start and finish figured, so I didn't plan any further. That was A Big Mistake™. 
> 
> This chapter went in about 100 different directions before it settled down and became this. It's a little short, but I think I figured out the general flow of the rest of this ridiculous story. I wasn't sure I'd be able to finish it before Rise of Iron drops on Tuesday, but apparently all I had to do was write some Steve POV stuff first. Who knew?
> 
> I hope you all continue to enjoy it. Thank you so much for all the comments! I reread them when I need an inspiration boost. <3

Bucky is slouched so low on his couch, he might as well be lying down. His controller is sitting on his stomach, and Destiny’s pre-game music is loud through his headset. Technically he’s waiting for Cap to finish his solo mission so they can continue on with Taken King, but in truth, he’s taking this time to enjoy the quiet, involuntary sounds Cap makes as he fights his way toward the end. The little huffs of indignation are fucking adorable, but the fast, hard breaths of victory have Bucky’s toes curling. 

It’s bad.

So bad, that Bucky has turned to his seldom used Grindr account. If he can’t find someone to take his mind off a nameless, faceless voice then he’ll know he’s doomed. Unfortunately, it’s Grindr and mostly Bucky finds himself grimacing at every profile he swipes through. Why does he even have this trashy app? Except maybe hooking up with some random guy will make him feel less pathetic about his burning desire for Cap. Cap’s voice. Whatever.

“That’s a lot of fire,” Cap says suddenly and Bucky barks a laugh, swiping left on yet another profile. 

“Yeah, now you’re an obnoxious hammer titan.”

“I didn’t know throwing hammers could be this much fun,” Cap muses.

“You’re just like Thor now.”

“Right,” Cap snorts and Bucky grins. 

“Fire Thor. Throwing hammers and lighting everything on fire.”

“Thor only has the one hammer.”

“Yeah mule-near or whatever,” Bucky agrees, closing Grindr with an internal sigh. There’s no way he can suffer through all these dick pics while listening to Cap.

“Sure,” Cap says flatly, “mule-near.”

They lapse into silence. Bucky’s not entirely surprised. The solo missions to gain a new subclass are kind of hectic. Cap’s probably too busy focusing on killing everything in sight with his cool new fire hammers to keep up a conversation. Which definitely doesn’t explain why Bucky immediately tries to get Cap talking again. 

“Hey, so, where’s your other half?”

Bucky’s not jealous. Really, he’s not. 

“My what?” Cap’s voice pitches extra high. Almost like embarrassment. Which is cute, unless he’s embarrassed because Chickadee is actually his boyfriend. Bucky might have to honest to god cry if that’s how it is. (It’d still be cute, though, and that’s the worst part.)

“You know. Your faithful companion, Falco.”

“How do you-” The words tumble out of Cap’s mouth so fast, Bucky can barely understand them. Coupled with the way Cap cuts himself off hard, it’s a little confusing for Bucky. “I mean, what?”

Bucky blinks. “You okay there, pal? I had no idea Star Fox was such a touchy subject for you.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

 _Yeah_ , Bucky thinks, _join the freaking club man_. 

“Falco Lombardi,” Bucky says flatly. “Bird guy. Your ridiculous friend.”

“You know, Bucky,” Cap says cheerfully, while Bucky’s stomach does somersaults over his name being said in that voice, “you rag on him so much, it’s almost like you-”

“DO NOT-” Bucky says loudly, effectively silencing Cap mid-sentence. He pauses and continues in a normal voice. “Do not say it’s almost like I like him, I swear to God.”

“Maybe I wasn’t going to say that at all,” Cap huffs. _Please_ , he was totally going to say that. 

“I don’t like him,” Bucky says. Then he realizes how final that sounds and hurries to correct himself before Cap decides to leave him forever. “I mean, I like him but in that antagonistic, caustic BFFs kind of way.”

“Isn’t that exactly what I was going to say?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky replies mulishly, “you never finished saying it.”

“Because you cut me off!” Cap cries, but he dissolves into laughter well before Bucky can work himself into an anxious, unhappy tizzy. He’d really rather not get into an argument with the current object of his lust. 

“Okay, but seriously, where is loverboy?”

“Are you sure you don’t _like_ him?” Cap asks, putting on that special emphasis that clearly means “have deep, dark hands-down-pants fantasies about.” 

“ _You_ like him,” Bucky mutters petulantly. 

“He is a pretty great guy,” Cap agrees easily. “Kind, caring, generous, funny. Cleans up real nice.”

Bucky snorts. “Christ, if you don’t want him, can I have him? I never meet guys that are genuinely nice and attractive at the same time.”

“You actually… date guys?” Cap asks haltingly. Bucky takes a deep breath to settle his nerves. He’s been out for a good long while now, but dudes on the internet are not always the most accepting people. Plus he likes Cap, so his opinions mean more than any old random asshole. 

Bucky puffs up defensively. “You got a problem with that?”

Bucky really hopes he doesn’t have a problem with that.

“No!” Cap shouts. “Jeez, Bucky, of course not. I’m just.”

“Just what?”

“Ah, no, it’s nothing,” Cap deflects softly. That couldn’t sound less like nothing if it tried, but Bucky’s making an effort not to make Cap uncomfortable after the last time. 

“Yeah, okay,” Bucky mumbles. Then, attempting to inject some levity back into their conversation, he adds, “But seriously, is Hawk Man single because I haven’t been on a date in forever.”

Cap laughs, not as freely as earlier, but Bucky will take what he can get. “He might be, but I don’t think you’re exactly his type. And anyway, you’ve probably been on a date more recently than I have.”

“Pfft, yeah right. It’s been,” Bucky pauses, counts back 8 months, “an embarrassingly long time. I think my last date was me and my Captain America poster.”

Cap follows that statement with a sound somewhere between a squawk and a moan. It’s inordinately sexy. 

“You, uh… like him, then?” Cap asks. His voice is all sorts of tight. Bucky wishes he could see his face so he could have a single clue as to what the sweet fuck is happening. 

“Uh, yeah, have you seen him? He’s got eyelashes for days and you could cut glass on his jaw.”

“His nose is a little crooked.”

“So? It’s cute.” Bucky has had almost this exact conversation with Becca before. It’s bizarre to be having it here, to say the least, but at least he's got practice waxing poetic about Steve Rogers.

“Oh jesus,” Cap groans. Judging by how muffled his voice is, probably into his hands. 

“What?” Bucky complains jokingly. “You don’t have a crush on America’s poster boy? I thought that was one of the requirements for joining the army.”

“Definitely not.”

“You even have the same rank, dude.”

Cap laughs, a little hysterically. Bucky gives him a few pity chuckles, just so he won’t feel alone. Who knows, maybe this guy had his first gay crisis over Captain America or something. Bucky won’t judge. He waits quietly for Cap to get himself together. 

“Feeling better champ?” he asks, when Cap finally stops laughing and heaves one deep sigh. 

“Sure,” Cap croaks. His voice is completely wrecked. Bucky smacks his thumb against his mic’s mute button so he can groan aloud. How goddamn unfair is his life, honestly. Shit.

He unmutes himself. “So have you just been sitting in orbit for like 15 minutes now or do you suck this much?”

There. Bring the conversation back around to Destiny. That ought to kill the quarter chub he’s got going. He didn’t even get to change into his sweatpants today and the zipper of his jeans in really unpleasant. Rude. 

“I _have_ been sitting in orbit for a while,” Cap confirms, voice still scratchy and too hot, hot damn. 

“Jesus Christ, okay. I’m joining you. Let’s go kill things.” And forget about all of this. 

Who is Bucky kidding? He’s never forgetting any of this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's a lot of fire.  
> 


	6. like a sigh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rise of Iron released at 5 AM EST yesterday and I was up at 4:58 AM. Send help. (Anyone else get to experience the server queue? I took screencaps to commemorate.)
> 
> I love when Bucky is close to his sibling(s) in fics, so I had to give Becca some screentime. There's basically no Steve in this one, but it's sort of a transition chapter. Bucky's suffering begins now. :D
> 
> Also shout out to AOU which I've seen all of once and didn't really care about. Steve's uniform was nice tho, A+. Please ignore that AOU happened in spring 2015 and I've been talking about Taken King all this time but it didn't release until fall 2015. Time is meaningless shhh.

Bucky knows he’s in trouble when he sees Becca pop online. He didn’t even know she still had Xbox Live, it’s been so long since she’s signed in. He flicks away from his friends list - specifically away from Cap’s GT, cheerfully proclaiming he’s been offline for a week - and prepares himself for whatever onslaught his sister has in store for him. 

She sends him a party invite. With the air of a man going to his own execution, Bucky accepts.

“What the fuck, Bucky, why don’t you ever answer your fucking phone?”

It’s a promising start.

“Mom always told me if I didn’t have anything nice to say, I shouldn’t say anything at all.”

“Bullshit, that has never stopped you before.”

“I’m a late bloomer.”

“Fuck you. The world is fucking ending or some shit and you’re still sitting here playing video games.”

Bucky shrugs listlessly. Yeah, so there’s something big going on in Europe or whatever and it might have started here in New York, but it’s not like 2012 so who cares? What’s more concerning is that Cap disappeared without saying anything and it’s been an entire week. His good pal Tweety Bird had been shifty as hell when Bucky asked, and hasn’t appeared online since. So Bucky’s thoroughly convinced something terrible has happened. 

“I wasn’t actually playing anything,” Bucky points out, because he’s an asshole. Can’t Becca sense that he’s too busy worrying about some guy he really wants to get down and dirty with to be concerned about whatever mayhem the Avengers are up to?

Becca makes a sound suggesting she’d very much like to rip Bucky’s arms off with her bare hands. “I don’t care Bucky! There are fucking evil robots flying around trying to kill everyone and you won’t answer your phone! Mom is freaking out.”

Bucky hums noncommittally. He’s probably overreacting to the whole thing with Cap disappearing. It’s not like his other friends haven’t occasionally gotten busy or needed a break. It happens. But. But the thing is. 

It’s just.

Bucky genuinely enjoys all his interactions with Cap. They get along well and they make each other laugh. He can honestly say he’s never had so much easy, relaxed fun online before he started hanging with Cap. Even the awkward turns in their conversations aren’t intolerable. They’re like a match set, a dynamic duo, a perfect pair. And despite Bucky’s lack of skill with other people’s emotions, Cap makes Bucky want to try. He wants to be able to help in the quiet moments when Cap seems downtrodden and sad. 

He’s in too deep. He knows he is. This isn’t just a “gosh your voice is nice and I’d like to bone you” situation anymore. Bucky has an honest to god crush on his mysterious internet friend. 

Or course. He, James Buchanan Barnes, would absolutely develop a crush on a mysterious internet man and only realize it when the mysterious internet man disappeared from the internet. He’s probably more upset about all this than he should be, but it really kind of sucks. He misses Cap. 

“Bucky!” Becca snaps. “Get off your ass, find your phone, and text Mom so she knows you’re alive.”

With a heavy sigh, Bucky pushes himself up and trudges to the last known location of his phone. He taps his controller against his thigh as he gently kicks dirty clothes around his bedroom floor, and winces when his phone goes skittering away from a pair of pants. He scoops it up, determinedly ignoring the frankly alarming number of texts and messages he has waiting for him, and shoots his mother a text. 

“There,” he grumbles, “Mom knows I’m alive.”

“Good,” Becca says primly. “Now get back to your couch and accept my invite to Minecraft.”

“Wow,” Bucky snorts as he dutifully follows orders, “you haven’t wanted to play Minecraft with me in 1000 years.”

“You know I’ve been busy, Bucky. Don’t mope.”

“I’m not moping,” Bucky whines, watching the aptly named Bucky and Becca world slowly load up. They used to play Minecraft together all the time, before Becca had started her senior year of college and gotten too busy for him. Going through the old ritual now is calming. Bucky finds himself curling up on his couch, laughing quietly at his sister’s antics, relieved of an ache he hadn’t noticed before. Maybe he’d missed her. 

Of course, Becca ruins all of it.

“So, dearest brother of mine, what the fuck is actually wrong? Did you get dumped again?” 

“No!” Bucky splutters. He can’t get dumped when his ridiculous internet crush has disappeared before he can even find out if Cap would be willing to date him in the first place. “Why would you even think that?”

“Bucky,” Becca sighs, insultingly patient, “you only ever get like this if your life is falling apart or your love life is falling apart. Since you still have internet, I’m guessing your life is still tolerable.”

“Tolerable,” Bucky repeats flatly. “Thanks.”

“Not all of us can be happy living on video games and a 5 dollar budget. You should be proud of your resilience.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Bucky mutters. He was planning on sparing the spider hissing just off to the left of his TV screen, but now he’s going to kill the hell out of it. Stupid annoying little sisters. 

“I know,” Becca chirps. “I learned it from you.”

“I’m so proud,” Bucky drawls, sarcastic despite the very real surge of pride he’s feeling. 

“You’re also deflecting. Out with it. Who dumped you? Should I beat them up?”

“No one dumped me,” Bucky sighs. “I have dated anyone in forever.”

“Well something obviously happened.”

Bucky is not going to admit to anything. Becca will laugh at him for the rest of his life if she finds out how pathetic he is. 

“Nothing happened.”

“Did you fall for a straight guy again? You have the worst gaydar ever, it’s incredible.”

“Jesus Christ, no,” Bucky whines. Maybe? He’s not actually sure. Xbox Live is not the easiest place to discover someone’s sexual orientation without outright asking. 

“Bucky,” Becca wails, so reminiscent of their youth that Bucky almost laughs. 

“Becca,” he mocks her. Bucky might be on the high side of 25, but he might also be 12. It’s hard to tell sometimes. 

“James Buchanan,” Becca says firmly. “I just want to make sure you’re okay. You used to tell me everything.”

“Rebecca Paige,” Bucky replies, just as resolute, “I am 5 years older than you. I _never_ told you everything.”

“Ew, Bucky, please,” Becca moans. “But anyway you definitely wouldn’t have lied to me about getting dumped.”

“I didn’t get dumped,” Bucky complains. He hasn’t gotten dumped in such a long time, it’s almost sad. 

“Please?” Becca says, all soft and serious. Bucky’s resolve shudders. How dare she take the genuine, kind route here? “I’m just worried about you.”

Bucky groans, taps the top of his controller against his forehead, and sits up on the couch. She’s going to laugh at him and can’t take that curled up. 

“It’s just a stupid crush,” he murmurs, feeling stupid and flushed with embarrassment. 

“Aw, Bucky,” Becca coos. “Why are you plopping around like a wet blanket then?”

“Because,” Bucky says, the verbal equivalent of a shrug. 

“Because? Because they’re not interested? Because he’s straight? Because… she’s a lesbian? That’d be a problem, I guess.”

“No, it’s not,” Bucky stumbles. He blows out a breath, irritated. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about him.”

It’s not strictly true, but it’s not exactly false either.

“Where’d you meet him?” Becca asks, innocent. Bucky levels a glare at his TV screen. It doesn’t react.

“Online.”

“Like, Tinder?”

“No,” Bucky hedges, dragging it out. It’s too late. She knows. _She knows_.

After a long moment, Becca says, “You met him here, didn’t you.”

It’s not a question. It’s a thoroughly judgmental statement. 

“Minecraft? No, that’s ridiculous,” Bucky says, full of false confidence. 

“James.”

Ugh, he hates his first name.

“It was Destiny,” he blurts out, unable to stop himself. 

“Bucky,” Becca’s voice is already pitching toward hysterical laughter. He’s heard it so many times before. “Oh my god, Bucky.”

“I know, okay?”

“You have a crush on a guy and you don’t even know anything about him,” Becca crows. 

“Please,” Bucky begs, knowing it won’t help. 

“Oh my god, you are so stupid,” Becca cackles. “I love you, you’re such an idiot.”

“Please, keep laughing at my suffering,” Bucky snorts. He’s embarrassed, maybe a little sad, but his sister’s obvious glee is catching. He has to focus to keep feeling bad.

“Oh my god,” Becca huffs, trying to catch her breath. “So why are you moping?”

“It’s just the whole thing,” Bucky sighs, flopping back onto his couch and dropping his controller on his lap. He rubs his hands over his face, careful not to smack his mic. “I mean, it’s Xbox Live so I have no idea how old he is. If he’s single or looking or if he’d even be interested. And we were playing together kind of a lot but now he’s just gone and I don’t know why or for how long.”

Becca politely stifles a laugh. Bucky gets it. His life is laughable.

“So he doesn’t have facebook or twitter or anything? No email address or phone number?”

“If he does, I don’t know it.”

“Well dumbass, get his deets next time you play with him. The next step in your relationship.”

Bucky can imagine the fucking cheshire cat grin on her face. 

“Right,” Bucky rolls his eyes. “‘Hey man, I don’t even know your first name but let’s be facebook friends.’ No problem.”

“Email addresses don’t have to be very personal,” Becca points out. “Neither does twitter. Don’t sabotage yourself, Bucky.”

“Why are you like this,” Bucky groans. Using logic is just plain rude, damn it. 

“I want you to be happy,” Becca says sincerely. “And you’re obviously not right now, so _try_. You’re not that invested yet, so if he gets all weird or homophobic on you, you can be done with it and it won’t hurt so much.”

Bucky would like to argue that, because he knows he’s already in way over his head. He appreciates her sentiment though. He’s pretty sure she got the same pep talk from him not so long ago.

“Fine, I’ll try.” 

“Good. Keep me up to date. And remember to use your damn phone occasionally.”

“I will, I will,” Bucky moans. She’s so goddamn demanding. 

“My work is done then. I’m going to go outside and do real things with my life.”

“I do real things with my life,” Bucky argues. 

“Sure,” Becca snorts. “Also I’m telling Mom you met your new boyfriend playing space marines on the internet.”

“Becca!” Bucky barks, but all he gets in reply is breathless laughter and his Xbox courteously informing him that she’s gone offline. 

Bucky picks his controller up and stares unseeingly at his TV. 

“Okay,” he whispers. “Ok, Bucky Barnes. You can do this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone leaving comments! Even if I haven't responded to you personally, I've read every one and I love them all. <333


	7. The best hiding places are always in plain sight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone left super lovely, encouraging comments on the last chapter of this and Rebuild all Your Ruins and I was so overwhelmed, I didn't respond to any of them. Just know that I love hearing from all of you. You keep me wanting to write, even when I doubt myself. <3
> 
> Shout out to Witcher 3, which is a fantastic game, and Overwatch, _again_ , because I don't own it and all my friends do. 
> 
> Also, I probably should have said this way back in Chapter 1, but if tumblr is more your thing, my writing blog is deepdigitalflexor. I've been posting this over there too.

Geralt spins, triumphantly cleaving a man in half, and Bucky grins determinedly at his TV. Witcher is great, Witcher is fun. Bucky is not in any way worried that Cap hasn’t made an appearance online in over two weeks. And he’s definitely not making outrageous leaps of logic like Cap was vacationing in Sokovia and the Avengers didn’t save him and now he’s dead and never coming back. Bucky is having great fun by himself. Just him and Geralt and the guy Geralt is lighting on fire. Cap who?

It’s all a lie. A huge goddamn lie. The tragedy in Sokovia was horrific and Bucky had felt so guilty about his indifference toward the robots that he’d scraped together a bit of his hard earned money to donate to the Sokovians with nothing left. And yet, days later, he’s still more concerned about Cap. Maybe he’s just become desensitized to tragedy or maybe his crush is out of control. In any case, Bucky can’t bring himself to play Destiny anymore. It’s just not fun without Cap. 

He’s pathetic. It’s Sunday night. He hasn’t showered since he got home from work on Friday and he’s been wearing the same sweatpants all weekend. There’s no food in his refrigerator. He’s been living the true Xbox gamer life, subsisting on Doritos and Mountain Dew. He feels disgusting and probably looks worse, but he’s having a hard time walking away from his TV. What if Cap comes online and he misses him?

Bucky tenaciously plays Witcher, ignoring an invite from some of his friends to play Overwatch (will they ever remember that he _doesn’t own it?_ ), until his stomach has gone right past pinching hunger pains and straight into nausea. Groaning, Bucky drops his controller and headset on the couch and slumps into the kitchen to scrounge up food. He’d love a piece of toast to settle his stomach, but he’s fresh out of bread. There’s a questionable carton of white rice tucked into the back corner of his fridge, but Bucky can’t even remember the last time he ordered Chinese. 

He settles for dry corn flakes, leaning against his counter and nibbling on single pieces. He hears the faint bloop of a notification from his Xbox, but it’s probably just another invite to a game he doesn’t own. He ignores it, like he ignores the rush of anticipation at the very possibility of Cap getting online again, and resignedly keeps munching. He keeps going until the box of corn flakes is half empty and, once determining that his stomach is settled enough for it, eats a brown, too sweet smelling banana.

After chugging 3 glasses of metallic tasting tap water, Bucky feels more alive than he has all weekend and decides to, ambitiously, take a shower. He powers past his Xbox, not even looking at his TV, and shuts himself into his bathroom. He starts the water to warm while he strips down, starting to feel genuine excitement now that he’s here. Showers are amazing. Why was he avoiding taking one all weekend?

He takes his time getting clean, luxuriating in the water, before dripping down the hall into his bedroom. He puts on clean sweatpants and a worn soft henley. It’s barely evening, but Bucky’s too old to care anymore. He’s ready for bed and he’s happy about it. Bucky shuffles back into his living room, collapsing onto his couch and collecting his discarded controller. His shower seems to have washed away much of the melancholy that was hanging over him all weekend, so he’s more relaxed than he would have been when he checks his notifications. 

There are 2. A notification of a friend coming online and a party invite. Both are Cap. 

Bucky deliberately sets his controller on his lap, presses his hands against his face, and lets loose a strangled scream into his palms. With preternatural calm, Bucky picks up his controller and accepts Cap’s invite. It’s got to be at least half an hour old now, and Bucky holds his breath while he waits for his Xbox to connect him to Cap. When the interface changes to show his name tile tucked in with Cap’s, Bucky heaves a deep, wooshing sigh. 

“Hey,” Cap says, his deep voice warm and friendly. 

“Hey, sorry,” Bucky responds in a rush. “I left my Xbox on while I took a shower.”

“Oh, no problem. I always wait a full hour before sending in a rescue team,” Cap jokes. 

“Yeah, haha you asshole,” Bucky grumbles. “You were gone for 2 weeks.”

His words are met with a startled silence. Bucky can absolutely hear the startlement. 

“Were you…” Cap hedges, tasting the words. “Were you worried about me?”

Bucky clamps a hand over his mouth to halt any involuntary noises and feels his cheeks warming in a blush. God, he’s an embarrassment. 

“Well, your fine feathered friend was shifty as hell when I asked after you and the whole thing with Sokovia…” Bucky explains weakly. 

“Oh. Sokovia,” Cap mumbles, sounding exhausted. Maybe a touch wounded. Bucky wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Cap is a bleeding heart. 

“Do you usually disappear right during the middle of an international incident?” Bucky thinks that’s a fair question. 

Cap huffs a bitter laugh. “It does seem to be a habit of mine.”

“That’s some seriously bad planning pal.”

“Yeah,” Cap sighs, heavy and sad. “I’m sorry I made you worry. I’m not used to letting people know I’m going away.”

“Oh man, how do you manage that?” Bucky laughs. “I don’t text my mom for a day and she sics my sister on me.”

“I don’t have any family,” Cap informs him plainly. It’s the flat delivery of a fact. Open mouth, insert foot. Bucky laments his complete lack of social skills. 

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Bucky cries, mentally kicking himself. Finally admits to himself that he’s got a genuine crush on this guy, and the first thing he does is bring up uncomfortable topics. So smooth, Barnes. Goddamn Casanova over here. 

“No, it’s alright. You couldn’t have known. My parents passed away a,” he pauses, swallowing audibly, “a long time ago now.”

“Still,” Bucky frowns, “I don’t know what I’d do without my mom pestering me all the time. I’d probably starve to death or something. And the holidays would be so boring without my dad’s super awkward father-son talks.”

“I never knew my dad,” Cap replies. What a goddamn downer. “He died before I was born. It was me and my mom for a long time.”

Bucky slaps his mic’s mute button hard. 

“Jesus fucking Christ dude,” he groans. He did not mean to open this deeply emotional can of worms. 

He unmutes his mic. “Man, I am so sorry. That sucks.”

Bucky winces at himself. If only 10 year old Bucky had ignored peer pressure and kept writing dumb poems instead of joining the baseball team. Maybe he’d be able to come up with something less stupid than “that sucks.” 

To his surprise (and 10 year old Bucky’s great delight), Cap chuckles. It’s a dark, deeply unpleasant sound, but it still counts. “Yeah. It does suck.”

“Um, so,” Bucky stumbles, apparently unable to let this conversation die. “No siblings?”

“Nope. I had a friend I was pretty close with, but no siblings.”

“Yeah?” Bucky asks, because he’s way out of his depth. What the fuck is he supposed to say to all this? 

“Yeah, his name was Arnie,” Cap says quietly. “Do you want to play Destiny?”

Bucky’s first thought is, “Oh thank _sweet fuck_ this conversation is done.” His second thought is, “Wait, his name _was_ Arnie?”

“Yeah, pal, let’s play,” Bucky agrees eagerly. “You have a taken king to defeat, right?”

Bucky starts the game, tapping his fingers against the back of his controller impatiently. When Destiny finally loads up, he joins Cap’s fireteam and waits for him to select the next mission. 

“ _Oh_ Cayde’s Stash!” Bucky exclaims when the mission name appears at the bottom of his screen. “I love this mission.”

“Yeah?” Cap laughs. Probably because Bucky is a goddamn delight and it’s hard not to be taken in by his enthusiasm. (Or because he’s a goddamn nerd. That’s also possible.)

“Yeah, we get to climb a tower!”

“Oh boy,” Cap replies with extreme sarcasm. Bucky snorts. 

When the mission finally starts up, they settle into quiet focus, only talking when it pertains to the game. Bucky carefully guides Cap through the (admittedly not that difficult) jumps up the tower, leading him toward the various objectives but always letting Cap complete them. It’s Cap’s first time - he deserves the chance to do things other than follow in Bucky’s wake. 

By the time they beat the final boss, complete with a tiny triumphant noise from Cap that makes Bucky’s heart soar, Bucky’s completely ready to dedicate his entire night to finishing Taken King. It’s just so nice to be playing with Cap again. Sleep is completely goddamn optional. 

Except Cap obviously disagrees. 

“I know it’s early, but I think I’m going to call it a night,” Cap says, punctuating it with a yawn. 

“Oh,” Bucky says, trying not to feel disappointed. “Okay.”

Cap must hear his dismay, because he laughs gently. 

“I’ll be back. I don’t plan to go anywhere anytime soon.”

“Yeah,” Bucky exhales, screwing up his courage. “Yeah, um, do you have like Twitter or something? So I can track you down when you disappear next?”

“Um,” Cap mumbles, “I have Instagram?”

“Instagram,” Bucky repeats flatly. “You don’t have to give me anything if you don’t feel comfortable.”

“No, it’s not that,” Cap says, although it sounds like a pretty weak protest to Bucky. “I just don’t really check anything else that regularly.”

Bucky sighs, plucking up his phone and searching for his Instagram app. He knows he has it somewhere. If this is all he’s going to get, then he’ll take it. He’s desperate like that. 

“All right, hit me,” Bucky says when he’s got Instagram up and ready. He’s going to delete every single stupid picture of himself on his account as soon as he’s done here.

“Brooklyn 5-8-7-0,” Cap says, and Bucky immediately types it in. “The most recent picture should be the Mall.”

“Mmkay,” Bucky hums, following his account and quickly scrolling through. Most of the pictures are just like the first - artsy urban landscapes, the sunlight through a canopy of trees, a couple sunrises. Bucky almost wants to roll his eyes. Of course Cap is some artistic photography guy. _Of course_. 

He’s about to comment on it, hoping to fluster Cap a little, when he gets to the last picture. It’s the only picture of people Cap has. There’s a black man, back to the camera, and body bent forward in obvious hilarity. Next to him is a tiny woman wearing a huge, floppy brimmed hat. From the angle the picture was taken, all you can see of her face is the profile of her generous mouth curled in a smile. It’s a pretty ordinary picture, but Cap’s comment on it is a single word. “Family.” Bucky feels himself getting all choked up, after their earlier discussion.

“So,” Cap interrupts, “did you find it?”

Bucky mutes his mic so he can clear his throat in peace. Cap doesn’t need to hear Bucky getting emotional. He’s an ugly crier. 

“Yep,” he replies. “All those fancy ass pictures and not a single filter? I can’t believe it.”

“Hey,” Cap laughs. “Being able to carry a camera around in my pocket and take pictures whenever I want is incredible. I’m not going to waste that on bad filters.”

“Wow, gramps. If cell phone cameras have got you all hot and bothered, it’s definitely your bed time.”

“If you’ll remember, I was heading that way before someone distracted me.”

“Yeah, yeah, go already.”

“I’m going,” Cap chuckles. “Goodnight, Buck.”

“Night, Cap.”

After Cap signs out, Bucky turns his Xbox off and returns to Cap’s instagram. He stares at the picture of the man and woman for a long minute, then returns to his own account to aggressively delete all the pictures of himself. 

Almost as an afterthought, he pushes himself up and heads to the window in his bedroom. His view isn’t good by any means, but his apartment is high enough up to get a decent shot of the Brooklyn skyline. He lines his phone up, snaps a couple quick shots, and posts the nicest of them on Instagram. He tags it simply, “goodnight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm mostly trying to stick with MCU canon on this, but:  
> 1\. Arnie Roth was pre-Serum Steve's BFF in 616 canon. He's one of the few openly gay characters in comics. MCU Bucky essentially took his place. Holla.  
> 2\. The 5870 on Steve's instagram account are the last 4 digits of his serial number. I couldn't find an MCU version, only the Earth's Mightiest Heroes one. It was a good cartoon though, so I'm allowing it. 
> 
> In case you hadn't noticed, I love Steve's relationships with Sam and Nat. I could live on friendship fics with these 3 for the rest of my life. 
> 
> Thanks for reading/commenting/kudos/etc! <333


	8. In the years after the Collapse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was such a struggle. I hate most of it. What I don't hate, I wrote while half asleep because I stayed up to 4 AM playing Destiny like a fool. Idk hopefully it's enjoyable none the less. 
> 
> As a note, I used the word "resing" in this chapter. It's pronounced "rez-ing," as in "the act of resurrecting someone." In my experience, people say it all the time in video games and especially in Destiny. I just wanted to make a note of it, since not every one reading this is a gamer.

“This asshole really needs to chill!” Hawkman yelps as his warlock is batted across the map like a gnat. He explodes on contact with the wall, and a countdown appears over his expanded ghost. He can’t be revived until his cooldown is finished. 

“This isn’t even the real Oryx!” Bucky chirps gleefully. “This is just his shadow.”

“What does that even mean?” Cap snorts, punching a taken psion in the face. The psion splits into two. One crumbles into ash as a whirlpool of fire forms at Cap’s feet, and the other runs off to split into even more of the little pests. 

It’s goddamn ridiculous. 

“It means he’s an asshole,” Birdy grumbles. 

“Someone’s pissy,” Bucky teases, popping his super. His hunter produces a bow of purple energy and shoots a tether at the boss. “He’s tethered,” Bucky says. “Use your super, Cap.”

Bucky uses his Vanish in Smoke ability to turn invisible and rushes across the map toward Feather Head’s revive indicator. On his way there, he hears the sharp metallic clang of Cap’s titan going super, followed by the rushing sound of his fire hammers flying through the air. Bucky grins. They’re like a well oiled machine these days. 

“Hey man, welcome back from the dead,” he says to Birdy, snickering aloud. 

“Hey thanks, _Bucky_ ,” he replies. Cap laughs quietly. He does a fair amount of damage before his super runs out and his titan is forced to start running around the edge of the map, dodging ridiculously overpowered shots from Oryx’s Shadow. 

“Aw, c’mon,” Bucky whines. “You can’t make fun of my name. My mom gave it to me.”

It’s not strictly true. His mom named him James. Where “Bucky” came from is something of a mystery to this day. 

“Your mom. Named you Bucky,” BirdMan says disbelievingly. He’s surrounded by those damn splitting psions. If he dies, Bucky is not reviving him this time. 

“I think it’s swell,” Cap chimes in. 

“White people!” Cap’s friend exclaims. Bucky just manages to stop himself from laughing. 

“How do you know I’m white?” Bucky fires back. 

“Your mom named you Bucky.”

Cap snorts a laugh at that.

“Don’t you start, Cap. You think cinnamon is spicy.”

Bucky barks a laugh at that. 

“It is,” Cap complains childishly. 

“It really isn’t,” Bucky says, voice high with restrained humor. 

“White people,” Chickadee reiterates. 

“Long story short,” Bucky says, “Bucky is a shortening of my middle name. And I’m not telling you what that is because I’ll never hear the end of.”

“Now I really want to know.”

“Cinnamon _is_ spicy,” Cap grumbles. It sends his companions cackling, and Oryx takes the opportunity to kill them both. Cap heaves a tremendous sigh, silently judging them fiercely enough that Bucky can feel it, and retreats to a fairly defensible corner. 

“You’ve got this, Cap,” Bucky says encouragingly. 

“Yeah,” Cap’s friend snickers, “just you and a room full of enemies. You should feel right at home, man.” 

Jesus, Bucky would love to know what exactly Cap does. He’s pretty sure normal discharged army guys don’t often find themselves stuck in a room alone surrounded by hostiles. 

“You know, looking at your Instagram, I’d’ve thought you were a photographer,” Bucky says. It’s about the most indirect way to ask about Cap’s profession as possible. 

“Oh,” Birdman cackles, volume escalating, “oh ho ho. You gave him your Instagram?”

Bucky would like to imagine this is punctuated by a lot of eyebrow waggling. Cap groans.

“I’m not resing you,” Cap grumbles. 

“Our boy’s real talented though, huh?” Bird Guy sounds like a proud papa. 

“Yeah, there are some nice pictures. I really like the sunrises.”

Plural. Like Cap is a goddamn morning person or something. 

“Wait, pictures?” Bird Dude boggles. “Did you take down all your sketches?”

“Sketches?” Bucky asks, at the same time as Cap moans, “I hope Oryx kills me.”

“You draw?” Bucky asks. 

“He does! He’s great. I’m gonna put him in a headlock until he posts more pictures.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Cap mutters.

“I will get our favorite redhead to help me,” he threatens. 

“That’s not fair,” Cap grumbles. Bucky would kill to know who the redhead is and why involving them is apparently so intimidating. 

The revive timer finally reaches 0, and Bucky watches as Cap’s titan heroically rushes through enemy fire to revive him. When his character respawns, he graciously revives Tweety before rushing off. 

“I didn’t know you could draw,” Bucky says, charging into the swarm of psions so Cap can blast Oryx’s Shadow in peace.

“I was an artist before,” Cap says reluctantly. “I’m out of practice now.”

“Yeah, I’m calling bull on that,” Cap’s friend snorts. He’s got his heavy machine gun in his hands. Where the hell did they both get heavy weapons ammo? It never drops for Bucky, damn it. 

“You can’t even draw a stick figure, so what do you know?” Cap snaps, but Bird Guy laughs, so it must be an inside joke. Bucky hopes so anyway. 

“I know you’re your biggest critic.”

Bucky punctuates the sudden silence with a whispered, “touché.” It sends the 3 of them into a fresh round of laughter. Bucky only pulls it together when his controller starts vibrating, indicating that he’s taking a lot of damage. 

“Shit,” Bucky gasps, swiping at his eyes. “We’ve gotta focus. He’s almost dead.”

“Why don’t you focus, _Bucky_ ,” Dodo Bird snickers. He activates his super, and the warlock’s giant purple energy bomb smacks clean into Oryx’s chest. Cap decides to take the same approach, and Bucky can hear his super activate from clear across the map. With all the hammers being thrown around, and the steady weapons fire from Bucky and Cap’s friend, it’s only a few seconds until Oryx is downed. 

“He’s dead!” Bucky cheers. 

“Finally,” Cap adds. 

“Lord,” Birdy groans. “Cap, I said I’d help you, but if you ever want to do this damn mission again, you’ll have to look elsewhere.”

“Wow, that’s loyalty,” Cap snorts. 

“Don’t worry, man,” Bucky says. “I’ve got you.”

“Yeah, Cap. Bucky’s got you,” BirdMan purrs suggestively. Bucky takes a deep, slow breath, torn between excitement and embarrassment. Christ, Bucky didn’t realize how hard it was to have a crush on an internet guy. 0/10, not recommended. 

“I like Bucky better than you anyway,” Cap teases lightly. They both laugh, and Bucky chuckles along weakly. His face feels hot. 

“I am pretty likeable,” he croaks. Has he been this fucking obvious with his crush? Are they making fun of his hopeless affection? He came out to have a good time and he’s honestly feeling so attacked right now. 

“Sure, some people like you,” Bird laughs. “And with that, I’m out of here. It’s been real kids. Don’t have too much fun without me.”

“Running tomorrow?” Cap asks. 

“Why do you think I’m going to bed? Some of us actually need sleep to function.”

“You’re beautiful even without sleep,” Cap says, laying it on thick.

“Aw, thanks, man. You’re so sweet,” Birdboy returns sarcastically. 

“See you tomorrow,” Cap says, genuine now.

Sometimes, they are so goddamn cute and domestic. Bucky is both delighted and outrageously jealous. 

“Yeah, man,” BirdMan says. “See you, Bucky.”

“Yeah, see you,” Bucky replies. Their third signs off, and then it’s just Bucky and his Huge Fucking Crush™. 

“So,” Cap drags out, “what do you want to do now?”

“I don’t care,” Bucky shrugs. As long as Cap is here and talking to him, he’ll play literally anything. “We can keep going with missions. Or we could do patrols, strikes, crucible. Whatever you want.”

“Maybe just patrols,” Cap says after a moment. “I’m kind of tired.”

Bucky hums agreeably. They could try to 2 man the goddamn Oryx raid and Bucky would suffer it gladly for Cap’s company. Even that level of endless frustration would be worth it. 

Cap takes them to Venus, where they chat sporadically, mostly about the game. Bucky shares his embarrassing near encyclopedic knowledge of the enemy races on the planet and Cap obliges him with half interested questions. They laugh a lot about stupid things, like Bucky being able to dance while driving his Sparrow around and Cap managing to wedge himself into a tiny crevice he can’t get free of. At some point, Cap switches to a defender titan, and pops his shield bubble just as Bucky’s firing his rocket launcher. The rocket hits the shield right in his face, and Bucky explodes spectacularly. Cap is laughing too hard at him to protect himself when an enemy comes in and smacks him straight into the ground. 

All the humor seems to tire them out, because they wordlessly agree to settle in one of the quiet areas of the map. They end up sitting next to each other, on the edge of a bright blue-green pool of water under the yellow sky. It’s downright fucking romantic, and Bucky hates himself for the rush of affection he feels when he realizes it. 

“So, you said you were an artist before the whole army thing,” Bucky says into one of their quiet pauses. “What kind of art?”

“I should have known this would come up again,” Cap sighs. Bucky winces.

“You don’t have to tell me. I was just curious.”

“No, it’s just a stupid hangup,” Cap mutters. “I haven’t done anything more than sketch for years.”

“Hey, man,” Bucky says consolingly, “I can’t even do that. I aced every math and science class I ever took, but I barely squeaked through art with a passing grade.”

“Not a fan of art?” Cap chuckles softly. Bucky hums consideringly. 

“I always liked music, but we didn’t have any music classes in my high school.”

“In a perfect world, what instrument would you have taken a class in?”

“Bass guitar,” Bucky says immediately. “Or the drums, I guess. I took piano lessons for years but I was never that interested.”

“You play the piano?” Cap asks, voice perking up. Bucky bites his bottom lip. How dare this man sound so cute.

“Maybe? I haven’t tried in,” Bucky pauses, makes a disgusted sound, “God, probably ten years.”

“Yeah,” Cap laughs. “I know how you feel.”

“Oh? What great skill did you let waste away to nothing?”

“Painting,” Cap says quietly. “I used to love to paint, whenever I could.”

“Why’d you stop?” Bucky asks, hoping after the fact that he’s not shoving his foot down his own throat. Like usual. 

“Didn’t have the time. When I,” Cap pauses here, exhales long and slow, “came back, nothing was the same. I never picked it back up.”

“But you still draw,” Bucky says. It sounds more like a question than he meant it to. 

“Sketches, doodles,” Cap says, blasé. It’s the closest a voice has ever sounded like a shrug looks in Bucky’s entire life experience. 

“So you haven’t given it up entirely,” Bucky points out. “It’s probably just like riding a bike. All you have to do is get back on.”

Bucky internally groans at his cookie cutter wisdom, feeling dumb. Wow, what if he was good at making his friends feel better? 

“You think so, huh?” Cap asks with a little laugh. It’s such a soft sound, delight layered over something heavy and cold. Bucky doesn’t think he should find it as endearing as he does. “I’ll give it a try as soon as you pick up the piano again.”

Oh, if Bucky had had incentive like this when he was a teenager taking lessons, he’d be a goddamn concert pianist now. 

“Just you wait. I’m sure I remember how to play Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

Cap laughs, brighter now. “Okay. As soon as I see proof, I’ll pick up a paintbrush again.”

“Challenge accepted,” Bucky says. He just needs a piano. If nothing else, his parents have one. They’ll be thrilled to get a surprise visit from their favorite eldest child. “Keep an eye on Instagram. I’ll be posting a video in no time.”

Cap hums. “Speaking of, I saw that picture you posted.”

“Of the shitty view out of my window?”

“It made me miss Brooklyn,” Cap confesses softly. There’s something so very sad in his voice. Bucky wants desperately to hug him. But the gentle, loving way, not the hips touching, face sucking way he usually wants. 

“Then you should come back,” Bucky blurts out, unthinkingly. He squeezes his eyes shut, wrinkling up his nose. He has no idea if that sounds as desperate as he thinks it does, but he hopes Cap doesn’t take it too seriously. 

“Everything is so different now,” Cap very nearly whispers. “I don’t know if I can go back.”

“Sure you can,” Bucky says, forcing the nerves out of his voice so he sounds low and quiet too. A match for Cap. He swallows thickly, and goes all in. “You just need someone to reintroduce you is all.”

“Are you volunteering?”

“Absolutely,” Bucky says with conviction. No matter what comes of his crush, Bucky would definitely love to count Cap as a friend. “You’re a part of my fireteam now pal. You’re welcome anytime.”

“Thank you,” Cap says, sincere and firm. “I don’t think I’m ready yet.”

“Anytime,” Bucky repeats. He means it too. Cap isn’t the first gaming friend Bucky has invited to visit, but he is the first Bucky has ever wanted to know so very badly. 

They sink back into silence, and Bucky takes the time to twist his camera around to take screencaps of the two of them sitting. He picks the one with the best angle, the one that makes it look like their characters have their heads turned toward each other, and posts it on Instagram. He captions it, “a couple of idiots from brooklyn.” He smiles a little absently at the post. It’ll always remind him of their hilarious antics and quiet sharing, just like any pictures of his friends would. 

Cap clears his throat, breaking the silence. “I guess I should try to sleep. Gotta go running in the morning.”

“I hate to break this to you,” Bucky says, checking the time on his phone, “but it’s already morning.”

“Then I’d better hurry if I want any sleep,” Cap says lightly. 

“Guess so,” Bucky agrees. He doesn’t really want Cap to leave. He was enjoying sharing the quiet with him.

“I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Yeah, definitely,” Bucky says. “Goodnight Cap.”

“Goodnight Bucky,” Cap replies, voice breaking low. Bucky let’s his head fall back. He turns his Xbox off and plucks his headset off his head, running his fingers through his hair. 

“Christ, I like you,” he whispers to the silent blue of his TV screen. Then he pushes himself up, turns off his TV, and slouches off to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for comments/kudos/etc! They help so much when I get stuck. :D


	9. Heh. Didn't work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First things first, if you haven't read Ch. 3 of [Rebuild all Your Ruins](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8050411/chapters/18441655), I suggest you do that before continuing. This chapter alludes to it _a lot_. 
> 
> Second, I'm definitely struggling a bit with writer's block lately. The first 1000 words of this were absolute torture. It was like pulling teeth to get even a full sentence down. Luckily Steve showed up and saved the day. Thanks Steve. 
> 
> I think that's all I had to say this time. As always, thanks for all the kudos/comments/etc! I love them all so much. <3

Bucky has been staring at Becca's message on his phone for at least 10 years.

From Becca:  
has your internet bf seen the video yet???

When his internal alarm reaches critical mass, he starts typing.

To Becca:  
no?????? i didn’t post it????

Becca’s response is almost immediate.

From Becca:  
lmfao

From Becca:  
and nice job admitting he’s your bf

To Becca:  
he’s not my boyfriend jfc

From Becca:  
too late asshole

Dread thundering in his throat, Bucky flips over to Instagram. Sure enough, to his horror, the video is right at the top of his page. Even more horrific, it has likes. One particular like sends Bucky’s heart beating and his head spinning. A hysterical laugh bursts from his mouth and he returns to his messages.

To Becca:  
I’m going to kill you. Slowly.

He makes himself take a couple deep breaths, feeling outrageously exposed. Something about Cap seeing him, especially when he was really just practicing _GOD he hasn’t played in so long_ , without Bucky’s express consent is decidedly uncomfortable. He sort of desperately would like to know what Cap thinks. Did he laugh at how ridiculous Bucky’s skill level is? Did he frown at Bucky’s violent sibling take down?

Or did he…

Maybe?

Like it?

Bucky’s phone buzzes.

From Becca:  
usually you pay the matchmaker who gets you with the internet boyfriend of your dreams

Bucky rolls his eyes and chucks his phone, very gently, at the other end of the couch. He loves Becca but he really could choke her right now. How’s he supposed to face (figuratively) Cap now? Like yeah, he’s reasonably attractive, he knows, but that video does not paint him in the best light. And the stuff Becca had said! Something about Bucky’s space boyfriend, right? He can’t bring himself to watch the video to confirm, but he’s sure it’s nothing good. 

Bucky throws himself onto his couch, flailing blindly for the remote control. His fingers smack into it, and he pushes the power button forcefully, staring balefully at the blue screen that greets him. He wants to turn his Xbox on, so he can distract himself from the unsettled (and, if he’s being honest with himself, sort of exhilarated) twist in his gut, but if he goes online, it’s possible he’ll see Cap. He should get it over with, like ripping off a bandaid. It’ll either sting briefly, or not hurt at all. 

Gathering his resolve, Bucky gropes around his end table for his controller. He sends his headset clattering to the ground, but he secures his controller and holds the guide button until his Xbox boops to life. He closes his eyes through the green startup screen, telling himself that he’s being ridiculous worrying about this. At worst, he can crack a couple jokes about the whole thing and it’ll all go away. 

He hears the “whoosh” sound of the Xbox dashboard loading up, and immediately flicks left to check his friends list. He scrolls down through the list and, not seeing Cap online, exhales slowly. He ignores the frankly absurd mix of relief and disappointment churning in his gut, and starts up Destiny with the intent to chill and complete patrol bounties. Easy, repetitive, mind numbing patrols. Nice. 

He’s about an hour in and sufficiently mellowed out about the whole Instagram Video Debacle™ to not freak out when his Xbox announces that Cap has just come online. He’s so chill now, in fact, that when Cap sends him a party invite, Bucky accepts it happily. Totally cool, not nervous at all. Until he remembers his headset is sitting on the floor, and the resulting scramble to grab it ends with him sprawled half off the couch and breathless. 

Okay, a little nervous, but still. 

“Hey,” Cap greets him, low and warm. Bucky forces himself to breath slow and even, and sinks back into his couch cushions. He tips an indulgent smile at his feet. 

“Hi,” he replies, lower and much softer than he’d meant to. He’s not a phone sex operator, honestly. Unless Cap is into that. He could learn. 

“Are you doing anything particular?” Cap asks hesitantly. He always sounds so uncomfortable asking for help completing his quests. Bucky rolls his eyes fondly. Like he has anything better to do. 

“Not really. What are you up to?”

“I guess I’m supposed to do some strikes.”

“Right,” Bucky nods, “that’s a quest isn't it?”

“Yeah, it says I have to complete 5 Vanguard strikes from the playlist,” Cap says. 

“Just Vanguard?” Bucky asks, eyebrows knitting together. “I thought it was heroic strikes.”

“It doesn’t say heroic,” Cap says uncertainly.

“Alright,” Bucky shrugs. “Vanguard strikes it is. I’ll join you in one sec.”

Bucky finishes up his patrol and joins Cap, congratulating himself on maintaining his cool. Maybe the dumb video won’t come up at all and Bucky can delete it until he makes a better one. Preferably one featuring a song he actually remembers how to play. 

“Ugh, the Shield Brothers,” Bucky grumbles, when the voice over for their first strike begins. They’re in the easy playlist, so it won’t be that bad, but still. _Ugh_. 

“I feel like you hate every mission in this game,” Cap chuckles. 

“That’s not true,” Bucky denies immediately. He racks his brain for an example of a mission he likes, but comes up short. It’s hard to think under pressure. “I mean, I don’t hate most of them.”

“But you don’t seem to like any of them either,” Cap points out. The man has a point. 

“Well, a lot of the missions are kind of dull and the strikes are all really tedious.”

“So why do you even play then?”

The obvious answer here is: to hang out with you. Bucky doesn’t think their relationship is quite at that level yet.

“It’s fun to play with friends.”

“But I never see you playing with friends,” Cap says, voice rising almost in question. “Except for me, I guess.”

“Oh my god,” Bucky gasps dramatically, grinning. “Did you just admit that we’re _friends_?”

Cap snorts a laugh. “I plead the 5th.”

“Hey, I don’t make Instagram posts for just anybody,” Bucky jokes, thinking of the Brooklyn skyline out his window. 

“Apparently your sister does, though,” Cap says. 

Bucky claps a hand over his mouth, mentally berating himself. Wow, he’s such an idiot. It’s almost like he _wants_ to talk about the video. 

He doesn’t though. Honest.

“My sister is evil and you should disregard her entire existence,” Bucky chokes out, attempting humor and getting something closer to agony. 

“Really?” Cap asks, doing a much better job on the comedy tour than Bucky. “I thought she sounded positively delightful.”

Bucky squeaks out a laugh, but there’s an undeniable urge to explain everything clawing at his throat. He just wants to make sure Cap knows that the video is not Bucky’s best work.

“Look, she wasn’t even supposed to be filming that. I was just practicing. And she must have stolen my phone to post it because I didn’t even know it was on Instagam until, like, an hour ago.”

“That was just practice?” Cap asks after a moment. Bucky blinks at his TV screen dumbly.

“Uh, yeah?”

“Oh,” Cap says, calmly. His titan is standing in the middle of a clusterfuck of enemies. It’s kind of hilarious and Bucky would definitely laugh if he wasn’t hanging on Cap’s every word. The anticipation is killing him.

“Oh?” he prompts.

“I’m surprised, is all,” Cap says. “I thought it sounded nice.”

There’s no way this guy isn’t tone deaf. Bucky’s pretty sure Scott Joplin was rolling in his grave while he was butchering The Entertainer. 

“Well… thanks?” Bucky says, trying to sound genuine and not utterly disbelieving. 

“I don’t have any paint,” Cap continues, unperturbed, “but I posted a couple sketches until I can get some.”

Bucky drops his controller like it’s just caught on fire and lunges across the couch for his abandoned phone. Ignoring Becca’s series of texts with increasing emoji usage, Bucky brings up Instagram and rushes to Cap’s page. Sure enough, there are 3 new posts, all sketches judging by the thumbnails. He picks the oldest of the three and gapes. 

It’s a shitty picture of a pencil drawing, but it’s still kind of amazing. The lines are dark, jagged, and heavy. There’s a rushed quality to it, messy even, but it looks intentional to Bucky. The linework makes the warlock in the drawing look like he’s actually in a battle, skimming through the air and fighting for his life. Plus, there are little details that make Bucky smile. The ribbed texture over the knees, the fishbowl helmet with the lightning storm inside, the tattered ends of the fluttering robe. 

“Oh wow,” Bucky breathes, completely forgetting both the game running before him and the headset still firmly placed on his head. 

“Bucky?” Cap asks. This is followed by the tell tale thump of one guardian hitting another. Bucky drags his eyes up to the TV screen. Cap’s titan is standing before him. 

“This warlock is Bird Brain, right?”

“What? Oh… The drawing?” Cap asks. He sounds almost shy. It’s super cute. “Yeah, I was doodling while he was playing one day and I kind of liked how it turned out.”

“It’s amazing,” Bucky gushes. “Like, it’s so good. It looks so cool.”

Cap laughs awkwardly. “It’s nothing special. Just a sketch.”

“No, I’m serious. I want to get it tattooed on my face so I can show it to everyone.”

“Please don’t,” Cap laughs, much more comfortably than before. “We wouldn’t want to ruin your pretty face.”

Bucky smacks his mute button before letting loose a peal of giddy laughter. It’s probably a joke. Those particular words in that order are usually sarcastic or taunting. It’s hilarious, ha ha. 

Bucky wants Cap to call his face “pretty” again. Preferably in person. With kissing involved. 

“Yeah, right,” Bucky says carefully, after unmuting himself. “Getting this plastered over my face would only be an improvement.”

Not really. Bucky’s got an attractive face and, great sketch or no, covering it with ink would probably not improve it. He’s not embarrassed to admit to himself that he’s just fishing for Cap’s opinion of his looks. 

“Hardly,” Cap snorts, short and sharp. “It wasn’t a great video, but I’m pretty sure a face like that gets described as handsome.”

Practically shoving his fist down his throat to stop himself from making any sound at all, Bucky collapses sideways onto his couch. He feels like a teenager from a shitty romance movie, squealing and flopping around on their bed. Cap thinks he’s handsome! Handsome!!! 

He forces himself to calm down quickly and extricates his fist from his mouth. 

“Aw, you think I’m handsome?” he jokes, trying to subtly add some genuine flirtiness to it. Christ, he wishes he was brave enough to ask Cap if he’s into dudes. It’d be so much easier than constantly toeing the line between jokes and flirting. But he’s so hopelessly invested now, it’s hard to tell himself the potential hurt of a hard no is worth it. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. 

Cap is quiet for a good long while. Long enough for Bucky to feel discomfort creeping in over his dizzying glee. Just when Bucky’s about to speak up, laugh it off _ha ha I’m hilarious look at that joke_ , Cap replies. 

“Yes,” he says, steady and firm and Bucky can barely hear his flustered urging to return to the game because he’s floating away, off to Cloud 9. His heart is hammering and his hands are shaking. It’s maybe a little outrageous to respond so intensely. His mom calls him handsome all the time. But this is Cap! The guy Bucky’s been driving himself crazy about for months. Besides, doesn’t that kind of imply he’s interested in guys? 

“If we don’t hurry up,” Cap finally gets through to him, “I’m going to have to leave without finishing this strike.”

He sounds tense. Bucky would like to tell him just how okay he is with being called handsome, but he gets the impression that bringing it up again will only lead to trouble. 

“Okay, let’s go,” he says instead, and sends his hunter sprinting down the long empty corridors toward to final boss room. He plays with only half his mind on the game. The other half is deeply invested in this thing with Cap. How much of it is Bucky’s own imagining, how much of it is real, and what Bucky can feasibly do to push it along. He’s not going to sit back and let this go to waste. 

He grins absently at his TV. He’s got some planning to do.


	10. Live to tell the tale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At the risk of repeating myself, omg guys this chapter. This chapter. I didn't think I'd ever get through it. I'm still not sure I like it but I don't know how to fix it so I'm giving it to all of you. 
> 
> Natasha has arrived! We'll be hearing from her before too much longer. But first, the grand reveal! Bucky's master plan to meet Steve. 
> 
> I'm estimating maybe 4 or 5 more chapters before we're all wrapped up here. Here's hoping I can keep it together that long lmao.

Bucky isn’t really a plotter. Sure, he’s pulled off the occasional ploy, tricked his parents a time or two, and gotten up to harmless shenanigans with his friends. But, really, he doesn’t plot. That’s always been Becca’s job and Bucky’s always been happy to follow her lead. 

(The major exception of course being when his friends need or want something and can’t figure out how to go about getting it. Bucky can be an incredibly efficient planner for his friends.)

Unfortunately, not being the schemer in the family means he’s woefully unprepared to convince Cap to come visit. He can’t just ask the guy to swing by if he has a free weekend, right? That’s definitely weird. It’s weird for a dude you’ve been kinda flirting with maybe to just invite you for a visit, right? Bucky’s pretty sure it’s weird. But inviting Cap up to New York is about the best thing Bucky managed to come up with on his own, so he’d reluctantly, with great shame, asked Becca for help. 

He’s been seriously regretting it for 2 weeks. Becca refuses to help beyond repeating, “you should just fucking _talk_ to him” but she finds great joy in making fun of him nonstop. It’s been 14 days of “how’s operation space marine bf going?” texts and calls from his mother questioning him about “this nice young man your sister keeps telling me you’ve met.” An entire half a month of Bucky desperately keeping his mother at bay and frantically brainstorming ways to meet Cap without seeming like a creep. 

So far, he’s not having any luck. Mostly he’s frustrated and a little disheartened. How the hell is he supposed to do this?

Heaving a dejected sigh, Bucky scoops up his phone and brings up Instagram. The only highlight of the last 2 weeks is the collection of little doodles Cap has posted. Bucky has spent a frankly embarrassing amount of time gazing at them but he consistently finds himself on one sketch in particular. 

It’s a simple comic, drawn in a cartoony style like old fashioned newspaper strips, reimagining one of the most memorable mishaps their little trio has had in Destiny. Cap had dropped his bubble shield at the same moment Bucky had tried to use his rocket launcher, and the rocket had collided with the shield and exploded in his face. The first 2 panels are the setup and accident almost exactly as Bucky remembers them from their game, but the third panel is Bucky’s hunter on the ground with stars dancing around his head, while Cap’s titan and Birdy’s warlock lean on each other in hysterics. 

Bucky smiles at the drawing, as he’s done so much lately. It’s a cute comic and reminds Bucky of the fun he’s had with Cap (and BirdMan if he has to be honest), but more than that, it means Cap has been thinking about him. Or at least, that’s what Bucky chooses to believe. It makes Bucky’s toes curl and he snuggles down into his couch with a sigh. He’s got to figure out how to meet Cap. He needs to know if this feeling is real and if Cap feels it too.

And he’s back to banging his head against a wall. He opens a message to Becca. Despite all her teasing, she’s about the only person he feels comfortable venting to about his ridiculous crush on Cap. 

To Becca:  
what am i gonna dooooo

He taps his phone against his palm a couple times, before setting it down and lurching into his kitchen. Rather than wasting away on his couch, he should probably feed himself like the adult he purports himself to be. He finds a box of spaghetti and proceeds to accidentally boil the ever living hell out of it. He drowns the gooey mess in pasta sauce and covers the whole thing in shredded cheese. It’s not great, but at least he won’t be hungry and miserable for the rest of the night. He stands over the sink while he gulps down his dinner, forcing himself to remain calm and patient. Even if Becca has texted him back, she won’t have anything nice or useful to say. Still, he drops his plate into the sink as soon as it’s clear and hustles back to his couch. 

He brushes his fingers over the power button on his Xbox before he throws himself onto his couch, snatching up his phone. There are 3 messages from his sister, the last of which came much later than the other two. 

From Becca:  
lmfao your so pathetic

From Becca:  
i already told you to talk to him dumbass

From Becca:  
you’re serious about this guy aren’t you?

Bucky stares at the text for several long breaths. 

“Fuck,” he breathes, setting his phone down gently and turning his attention to his Xbox. With controller in hand and headset on, Bucky starts up Destiny. He taps his fingers against the back of his controller while he waits for the game to load and tries very hard not to think about anything at all. 

As soon as he’s able, he opens his menu and pages over to the roster tab so he can see who on his friend’s list is online. Cap isn’t (Bucky has to firmly push away his disappointment), but BirdMan is. Bucky blinks, finger hovering the invite button. He’s never actually played with Bird Guy without Cap there as a buffer, and it’s a bit strange to realize. Bucky takes a deep breath, shakes his head, and sends the invite. Birdy can ignore it if he’s not interested. 

Bucky is heading to the Tower to pick up the daily bounties when he gets an invite of his own. He joins the party, wondering absently if this is Falco’s way of telling him “no thanks” on the game invite. 

“Nice work inviting me to play without starting a party,” BirdMan says. The unspoken “dumbass” on the end is clear as day to Bucky.

“Whatever, man,” Bucky whines. “Fireteams have in game chat.”

“Yeah, but the party is better.”

“If you say so,” Bucky replies. He really wants to ask if Cap is going to make an appearance soon, but he doesn’t want to sound too desperate. This is Cap’s best friend, as far as Bucky can tell, so he’d like to not make a huge ass of himself. “So, anything you wanna do?”

“Cap will probably be on soon, if you want to dick around for a while.”

“Oh, okay,” Bucky chirps, perking up instantly. 

“Mmhmm, I’m pretty sure he’s finally making good on his promise to paint something.”

“He said he needed to buy paint,” Bucky says, for lack of anything else. He feels so off kilter talking to this guy without Cap here. When did he get so awkward?

“Yeah, one of his friends heard about that and decided to drag him to the store.”

“Oh yeah?” Bucky says, frowning at himself. 

“Yeah, she thinks it’s cute that he has a huge crush on you.”

Bucky hums automatically, and then his brain actually processes that sentence. He splutters, his heart slamming into overdrive. 

“What?” Bucky gasps, way louder than he’d intended. “He. I. What?”

“Okay, look man,” BirdMan says suddenly, sounding serious. “I need you to level with me on something.”

“Uh,” Bucky grunts, flushed and frantic. He makes himself take a couple of slow breathes. “Okay?”

“I’ve got money riding on this,” BirdMan warns him. 

“Okay, what the fuck?” Bucky does not like being messed with and he’s not entirely sure he’s cool with this topic of conversation either. 

“You’re trying to woo my boy, right?” BirdMan asks, sounding calm and collected. Bucky’s a little jealous, honestly.

“What?” Bucky squeaks, voice strained. Bucky Barnes, professional broken record. 

“Because he likes you man and it’s goddamn adorable, but if you don’t feel the same I need to know asap. I gotta be ready with the damage control.”

Bucky slaps a hand over his mouth and slouches down on the couch. His face is hot and his heart is pounding. He feels a little lightheaded. In a couple days, he’ll probably be jumping for joy, but right now he’s overwhelmed. 

“Damage control?” Bucky murmurs from between his fingers. He’s staring at the ceiling. Maybe this is a dream. A weird, bad spaghetti dream. 

“Cap’s tough but he’s been through a lot. If he’s gonna get let down, I want to be ready to support him.”

“It’s that bad?” Bucky asks, shaky. Cap always seems so put together.

“He’s a vet,” BirdMan says slowly. “He’s lost a lot of important people.”

“That’s a yes,” Bucky mumbles. 

“I just want to know if I should be encouraging him or pulling him back, man. He’s my best friend. I don’t want him to get hurt.”

Bucky counts to ten, breathing slowly. There’s a knot of nerves settled in his gut, but the realization that Cap absolutely, 100% confirmed likes him makes him dizzy. A hysterical laugh bubbles up his throat. 

“Yeah,” Bucky chokes. “Yeah, I like him.”

It’s embarrassing to say, but there’s a certain relief to admitting it, too. Besides, Cap’s best friend is basically giving him a thumbs up on pursuing him. That’s a good thing, right? It’s good when your crush’s friends like you. 

“Okay,” BirdMan murmurs soothingly. “Okay, good. Sorry for ambushing you.”

“Yeah,” Bucky repeats. Ambush is a good word for what just happened to him. With wobbly fingers he grabs his phone and sends Becca an SOS text. Maybe she’ll buy him ice cream or something. That’d be nice. And then the two of them can freak out about Cap’s confirmed crush on him. 

“Cap’s real special,” BirdMan continues. “Just a real special guy. I wouldn’t push him toward just anyone, but dude, you make him so happy.”

Bucky chokes, breath wheezing in his throat. Jesus. _Jesus_. This is out of control. 

(Cap likes him! Cap _likes_ him!)

“Oh,” Bucky breathes, strained. 

“But I’m warning you right now man, if you ever hurt him, I will _end_ you.”

“Holy shit,” Bucky says, pitching into wild laughter the way a drunkard might pitch onto their own face. “Holy shit, are you giving me the shovel talk?”

“You bet your ass I am,” Birdy replies sternly, but there’s a current of humor in it now. 

Laughter bubbles out of Bucky’s throat, a heady mix of joy and nervous tension. “Holy shit,” Bucky exhales, grasping at calm determinedly. Regulating his breathing helps, but not as much as he’d like. He still feels hot and breathless. 

“Mmhmm,” Birdy hums. “FYI, he just got home so you’ve got maybe a minute or two to get your shit together.”

“Oh my god, how is this my life,” Bucky groans. He drops his controller on his lap and grabs his phone, cradling it close to his chest. He sends another message to Becca. 

To Becca:  
BEC HOW IS THIS MY LIFE????

She responds within seconds. 

From Becca:  
jfc what happened now

From Becca:  
at the store btw. half baked or phish food?

Bucky squeezes his phone gently because he can’t currently hug his sister. 

To Becca:  
i love you. phish food.

To Becca:  
cap’s bff just gave me the shovel talk

Bucky has barely sent the text when he gets Becca’s reply.

From Becca:  
BUCKY!

From Becca:  
OMG BUCKY

From Becca:  
ur practically official now 

From Becca:  
when’s the wedding

Bucky groans, completely forgetting the microphone still hovering by his mouth.

“You gonna survive, man?” Birdy asks. 

“Uh, yeah,” Bucky coughs. “Just my sister annoying me.”

He finds, however, that the brief conversation with Becca has alleviated a lot of his nerves. Now there’s just a swell of happiness and anticipation building in his chest, and there’s a grin trying to steal over his lips. He returns to his phone once more. 

To Becca:  
ice cream eta?

From Becca:  
give me an hour. gotta run home first

To Becca:  
home home or dorm home?

From Becca:  
dorm home

Sometimes Bucky thinks Becca was a fool to go to college so close to their parent’s home (ignoring the fact that he now lives within easy traveling distance himself), but other times he’s so damn grateful. What would he do without his sister’s emergency ice cream visits?

To Becca:  
make it 2 hours and i’ll pay for ice cream

From Becca:  
deal

Bucky grins at his phone, and the two hour window he just bought himself to play Destiny. It’s not until he hears Cap give a cheery, “hey guys,” before he remembers he’s still online. Stomach flipping, Bucky drags his attention back to his TV.

“Hi,” Bucky says, a little weakly. His nerves return now that he’s actually talking to Cap. 

“Hey man,” Birdy says. “How was your date?”

“It wasn’t a date,” Cap whines. “It was good though. I miss her when she’s not around.”

“Yeah, I miss her too,” Birdy replies, but with a much dreamier quality than Cap’s admission. 

“So she’s hot?” Bucky snorts, valiantly ignoring the spike of jealousy. Cap is totally allowed to have attractive friends, female or otherwise, especially since Bucky hasn’t actually made a move on him yet. 

“Hey, don’t you judge me,” Bird Guy replies. 

“Oh, Bucky!” Cap breaks in suddenly, swiftly cutting through the playful argument Bucky was just about to launch. “I got paint today.”

“Oh yeah?” Bucky smirks, teasing. “ _Finally_.”

Cap laughs. “Any requests? I’ll paint you something.”

Bucky claps a hand over his chest, feeling his heart thudding overtime. This guy is impossible. How is he this precious? Bucky might die before they ever get anywhere. 

“Everything you draw is great,” Bucky says, which is understating things really but shouting about how much he loves Cap’s doodles is probably going to end in strange places. “So I’m sure whatever you paint will be amazing too.”

“Oh,” Cap sighs, punctuating the sound with a shy laugh. He sounds happier today than usual, Bucky thinks. Mystery lady friend must be really something. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“Great,” Birdy cuts in before Bucky can get too gooey, “if you two are done gushing at each other, can we do something?”

“Oh right,” Bucky says, suddenly reminded that he’s the fireteam leader today. “What do you want to do?”

Cap makes a noncommittal sound. Bucky silently agrees. What is there even left to do in Destiny these days? 

“Well in that case,” BirdMan snorts, “let’s do the Prison of Elders.”

Bucky goes about navigating to the Prison of Elders, half listening to his friends vaguely discussing Cap’s day. There’s talk of what was had for dinner and how long she’s planning on staying, and Bucky gets the distinct feeling he’s not supposed to be paying too much attention to this. He lets himself zone out while Destiny loads. 

“Oh yeah,” Cap says, breaking the gentle rhythm of the conversation and pulling Bucky’s attention back. “Do you ever go to New York Comic-Con, Buck?”

Bucky blinks, wondering how the conversation got here but not totally against it. 

“Sure, I’ve been a couple times. It’s fun.”

The fun level of NYCC, in Bucky’s experience, is directly related to the amount of friends accompanying him. Going alone has not been the most fun he’s ever had. 

“I saw Iron Man there once,” Bucky reminisces. One of his friends is a huge Iron Man fan and damn near started crying when the super hero had shown up. “It was… an experience.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Cap mutters. 

“No Black Widow, huh?” Birdy sighs. “What’s the point if she’s not there.” 

“Have either of you ever been?” Bucky asks. They’re both originally from New York, after all.

“Nope,” BirdMan says. 

“I’ve always done my best to avoid it, actually,” Cap admits. 

“Oh. Uh, well, it’s fun if you have a friend to go with. You should give it a try someday.”

“Uh, yeah, maybe?” Cap blunders, sounding pained to be agreeing with that sentiment at all. 

“No,” BirdMan says suddenly. “No, no, wait. We should go. We should definitely go. This year.”

“What?” Cap yelps. Bucky blinks.

“I’m texting our lady friend right now. We’re going. Maybe we’ll see you there, Bucky?”

And suddenly, Bucky gets it. _Holy shit_ , Bucky gets it. BirdMan, true to his name, being the ultimate wingman. 

“Yes!” he whoops. “Yes, definitely. If you come, we can hang out. It’ll be great.”

Cap makes a long, drawn out sound that distinctly reminds Bucky of the agonized death wail of a computer. 

“Great, fantastic,” Birdy tweets. “Don’t worry, Cap, I’ll get this all sorted.”

Bucky bursts into laughter, unable to help himself. Of course. Of course, after all his furious brainstorming, Cap was the one to come up with a suitable plan. Comic Con. It’s always crowded and usually hot, but that just opens up opportunities to steal Cap away, to somewhere quiet and secluded. Bucky grins fiercely. 

He’s going to owe BirdMan a fucking gift basket for this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to [SiriusGrey](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SiriusGrey) for putting the idea of Sam just straight up asking Bucky about his feelings in my head. I hope it worked out all right. I'm a little worried he's a bit too OOC here, but I figure Sam would absolutely jump down someone's throat on Steve's behalf and he doesn't actually know Bucky here so..?
> 
> As always, thank you so much to everyone commenting, leaving kudos, etc. I love hearing from all of you and I hope you continue to enjoy this fic. :)


	11. a reminder and a warning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so I foolishly allowed myself to be convinced to start NaNoWriMo like basically on Nov. 1, so I've been scrambling a little, not gonna lie. Good news is, NaNo is also Stucky and also more Destiny because I've got a one track mind. Bad news, it's a lot harder for me to focus on this. That said, I still plan to get a new chapter out about once a week... Just forgive me if I don't make it. (In other news, anyone interested in betaing a Stucky fic sometime next monthish? lmao)
> 
> This chapter took a turn I wasn't really expecting, so it turned out a little shorter than I'd have liked. Consider this a part 1, part 2 to be posted hopefully next week. After that, I'm thinking maybe 2 or so more chapters of Rebuild All Your Ruins and then maybe 3 more chapters here? Something to that effect anyway. I'll warn you that there's going to be a bit of a time skip coming up in a future chapter, but I'll let you know when we get there.
> 
> Also, I plan on responding to comments from last chapter hopefully soon but I... haven't gotten around to it yet? I'm 100% terrible please forgive me.

“Nope, I’m definitely going to do it now. You can’t stop me,” Cap insists. 

“No,” Bucky groans, unable to stop his laughter. “No, please, I swear I was kidding.”

Cap laughs, bright and easy, and Bucky sinks back into his couch cushions, grinning stupidly down at his controller. 

“It’s too late,” Cap insists gleefully. “You made your request and now I’m going to paint it for you.”

“Oh my god,” Bucky moans, swallowing a laugh. “I’m going to treasure it forever.”

After finding out that Cap had watched Firefly on his recommendation, Bucky couldn’t quite stop himself from making jokes about Cayde and Ikora. It’s not really his fault that the Destiny characters are voiced by two of his favorite characters from the TV show, right? He had jokingly asked Cap to paint him a character swap, essentially, putting Cayde and Ikora into the roles of Mal and Zoe. He feels kind of like a ridiculous fanboy for it, but he can’t seem to sway Cap now. 

“Good,” Cap says, sounding satisfied. “I can give it to you at Comic-Con.”

“I still can’t believe that’s actually happening,” Bucky grins. Comic-Con is still a couple months away but at least there’s ample time to get plans sorted out. 

“Neither can I, believe me,” Cap snorts. 

“Still not happy about it, huh?” Bucky jokes, even though it makes him doubt everything about his relationship with Cap. If he’s not excited about coming, does that mean he’s not eager to meet Bucky? 

“It’ll be nice to visit New York again,” Cap hums thoughtfully. “I’m just not sold on going to a convention.”

Bucky’s controller vibrates suddenly, and he turns his attention to his nearly forgotten game. He and Cap had done a patrol on Venus that sent them far down one of the dead ends on the planet. Instead of leaving or hiking back the way they’d come, they’ve contented themselves with sitting around and killing the constantly respawning enemies. The latest wave of baddies are shooting his hunter, so he jumps up and makes short work of them while chatting. 

“They’re very busy. Lots of sweaty people in small spaces,” Bucky says. “But they’re a lot of fun too. It’s a lot of nerds getting really passionate about the things they love.”

“I’m not really a fan of crowds,” Cap mutters. 

“Oh,” Bucky says, suddenly worried that they’ve all pushed Cap into something that’s going to make him miserable. Not liking crowds could be a PTSD thing, right? Bucky really ought to do some research if he actually plans on making a move on Cap. “If it’s… If it’s like a thing…”

Cap saves Bucky from his stuttering attempt at giving him an out. 

“Oh, it’s not a veteran thing,” Cap says quickly. “I just prefer not being in enclosed spaces with a lot of people.”

“Yeah,” Bucky sighs, relieved. “I can understand that.”

“You’ve been before right?” Cap asks and without waiting for a response, hurries on. “Have you ever dressed up in a costume?”

Bucky’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise (and possibly delight) at the question. 

“Why? Are you guys gonna dress up?”

Lord, he hopes Cap is going to dress up in something good. Something that Bucky can spend stupid amounts of time drooling over, for example. 

“I don’t know,” Cap says. “I don’t think I’m going to really get a vote on this one.”

Bucky laughs, making a mental note to thank BirdMan for his dedication to this cause. The man went from calling him out on his crush, to giving him the shovel talk, to being the best wingman Bucky could ever ask for. What a guy. 

“I haven’t dressed up before, but I’ve always thought it would be fun,” Bucky says. 

“Ugh, not you too,” Cap groans. On the TV, his titan leaps up and demolishes another wave of bad guys. 

“Come on,” Bucky chuckles. “You can dress up like anyone! You can be a hero or a villain or, I don’t know, a giant Tetris block.”

“Anyone could be a hero anyway,” Cap mutters. “It’s not about the uniform.”

“Maybe,” Bucky says skeptically. “But I mean, what would Iron Man be without the uniform?”

“Tony Stark,” Cap says, sounding a bit like he’s sucking on a really sour lemon. “Who, despite his flippancy and occasionally troubling behavior, has done a lot of humanitarian work since he gave up weapons manufacturing.”

“Okay but he probably wouldn’t be able to shoot lasers at bad guys without the suit.”

Cap sighs loudly. “It’s always the lasers.”

“Alright, what about Captain America? Without his suit, he’s just a really strong soldier.”

Cap snorts, which makes Bucky grin. He can’t quite tell if Cap respects the super soldier, or thinks he’s completely overrated. Bucky thinks the hero is great (even if he didn’t have a shoulder to waist ratio that left Bucky’s mouth dry), but maybe an army vet of the same rank would feel different. 

“You know originally that suit was just a pair of tights he wore while prancing around on stage spewing propaganda, right?” 

Bucky definitely knows the tights. He may have spent extra time staring at that page of his history textbook during his youth. 

“Yeah,” he says slowly, “but it became a symbol of the American ideal. All the good things America should strive to be, and stuff.”

“For all the good it did,” Cap scoffs. Bucky blinks, processing. 

“You don’t think Captain America is… good?” Bucky asks, feeling a little disappointed. It’s not a deal breaker if the guy he has a massive crush on doesn’t like his favorite superhero, but it’s not ideal either. 

Cap heaves a sigh. “I think the good he does is overshadowed by political and social movements the media insists he supports, even though he’s never said anything on the matter.”

“Well he could just speak up if his name is being used to support things he doesn’t approve of,” Bucky says. It’s not something he’s ever really thought of (he’s always too distracted by that jawline), but it really would be nice if Captain America ever confirmed or denied reports of his involvement. Especially when Fox News starts throwing his name around, _yikes_. 

“I guess he could,” Cap says. He chuckles darkly, adding, “then he can disappoint half the country.”

Bucky licks his lips, rolling that around in his mind for a minute. Yeah, if Captain America stood up one day and made his stance on social matters clear it could cause unrest… But if he stays quiet, isn’t he kind of agreeing with whatever new issue his name is being tagged onto?

“If he stays quiet,” Bucky says thoughtfully, “isn’t he already disappointing half of the country? Like the half that could really use the kind of support he could bring around?”

Cap doesn’t offer anything further and Bucky doesn’t really know where to go with this conversation. He can’t quite decide if Cap is annoyed or thoughtful or if maybe he just really doesn’t like Captain America. It’s not great though, whatever it is. Bucky much prefers the banter and light hearted chatting they usually get up to. Long, sullen silences over the mic kind of suck. 

“You know,” Cap says quietly, after several long minutes and multiple waves of fresh baddies, “my friend actually suggested I dress as Captain America for Comic-Con.”

“Oh man, really?” Bucky laughs. Have his friends never asked him about his favorite super heroes before or what? 

“Mmhmm,” Cap hums. “She said it would be perfect.”

“Perfect?” Bucky jokes. “Does that mean you’re a blue eyed, blond haired American poster boy?”

“It might,” Cap says smoothly. Bucky chews on his bottom lip, trying to imagine what Cap looks like. He knows Cap goes running with BirdMan, often from the sounds of things, so he’s probably in shape. Maybe a little on the slender side? Bucky tries to create a picture of him in his head, but he can’t guess at Cap’s face at all. 

“I wish I knew what you look like,” Bucky groans quietly. He feels momentarily embarrassed about it, until he hears Cap’s quiet sound of distress.

“You will soon enough,” he points out. He doesn’t sound particularly enthused about the idea.

“Wow, you sound so thrilled to meet me,” Bucky says sarcastically, aiming to make it a joke. His own doubts on the matter make him sound a little bitter, though. He winces and hopes Cap doesn’t take his words too seriously. 

“It’s not,” Cap says quickly, before stopping himself and audibly swallowing. “I _do_ want to meet you,” he says firmly. He continues much softer, “I just don’t want things to change after you do.”

Bucky feels himself reel a little, sinking back into his couch miserably. Cap doesn’t want anything to change? Had BirdMan been wrong about Cap’s feelings? Had Bucky gotten his hopes up for nothing? He desperately wishes he had more to go on than the softly apologetic tone of Cap’s voice. Body language would be so goddamn helpful in this situation. 

For a moment, Bucky entertains the idea of admitting his feelings to Cap right this second. At the very least, it’d clear things up between them and Bucky would love to really understand what Cap is looking for from all this. Bucky swallows back his crushing disappointment and puts on a brave face.

“I’m sure nothing will change,” he chirps, proud of himself for sounding so casual. 

“Sure,” Cap says, voice rising at the end like there’s a question mark there. He sounds… Not sad, but distressed maybe? Bucky can’t tell. “Hey, Bucky? It’s not that I don’t want to meet you,” Cap says in a rush. “I really, _really_ do. But there are things about me you don’t know and I’m not sure how well you’ll take it when you find out.”

 _So tell me!!_ Bucky wants to yell, or maybe beg, but he keeps his mouth closed. They’d first played together months ago, now, and Bucky hasn’t once felt anything but delight or desperate pining for Cap in all that time. He’s angry now, hurt perhaps unfairly. He doesn’t know what Cap’s secret is, or how difficult it might be to explain to a near stranger over Xbox Live. Still, Bucky’d been foolish enough to start thinking of a next step in their relationship as an inevitability and now he’s got to face reality. It’s not pleasant. 

“Yeah, don’t worry about it pal,” Bucky appeases, although he can hear the tension in his own voice just fine. He’s not sure if he wants Cap to notice or remain oblivious. 

“ _Bucky_ ,” Cap pleads. He sounds flustered to Bucky, but it’s hard to really tell. “Please, listen. I- It’s… My life is kind of a mess and. Things can change; I’m just worried _how_.”

Bucky grits his teeth against the sympathy and desire to console Cap. Maybe it’s possible that Bucky is overreacting and Cap’s words hadn’t been meant the way Bucky had taken them. BirdMan had seemed pretty adamant that Cap was going to need a lot of support to venture into the romantic relationship realm, so it could be Cap’s doubts or fears getting to him. It could be any number of things really, but if Cap isn’t willing to talk about them, then Bucky isn’t really sure what he’s supposed to do. 

At the moment, all Bucky wants is to curl up in his bed, maybe listen to the old emo bands he’d been a fan of in high school and pretend for a moment that the events of tonight had not unfolded at all. 

“Hey, like I said, it’s cool,” Bucky manages, sounding calm and relaxed, which is something of a minor miracle. 

“Bucky,” Cap whispers, and Bucky decides he needs to take some time to deal with this weird jumble of feelings before he can deal with Cap like an adult.

“You know,” he says loudly, bulldozing through the heavy, awkward emotions settled between them. “I’m kind of tired. I’m gonna call it a night. See you, Cap.”

He doesn’t wait for Cap to reply before yanking his headset off and lurching to his Xbox to jab at the power button. It chimes cheerfully when it shuts down and Bucky slumps to the floor before it. He scrubs his hands over his face, making himself breath slowly and deeply. 

“Get it together Barnes,” he mutters. “You’re fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve's on one side of this mess going, "please don't let my being Captain America ruin literally everything" and Bucky's over here like, "omg dude just tell me so we can work it out." I think Steve has been dragging his heels pretty consistently throughout this fic, so hopefully it doesn't seem that weird for him to throw a wrench into everything. I'm very fond of the trope (I guess??) of Steve feeling really trapped by the Cap persona in the 21st century ayyyy. It's going to work out fine, I promise. 
> 
> As always, thank you so much for all the support I've gotten. I feel a little like an impostor most of the time, so everyone's kind words are really amazing. <3


	12. it will never fire again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I SURVIVED NANOWRIMO EVERYONE!! It was a close thing at the end, but here I am, still alive and trying really hard to wrangle these two dummies again. The fic I started for NaNo is monstrous and I still have so much more to write, but I'm going to put it on hold to focus on finishing this story up. We need to get these boys to NYCC ASAP. :)
> 
> It's been a while since I've even looked at this fic, and the tone is completely different from my NaNo fic, so I'm sorry if this sounds weird. I tried to get back into the mindset, but it's harder than I expected. I hope you still enjoy it, anyway! Next couple chapters will probably be in [Rebuild all Your Ruins](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8050411/chapters/18441655), because I need to whip Steve's side of the house into shape before we go to any conventions. 
> 
> As always, thank you so much to everyone who comments/leaves kudos/etc. It makes me so happy to hear from all of you. :D

Bucky takes a deep, centering breath and accepts the party invite. 

“Hi Bucky,” Cap says, a little forcedly enthusiastic in Bucky’s humble opinion. 

“Hey man,” Bucky replies, cool and nonchalant. The last thing he wants right now is to come across as emotional about… anything at all, really. 

Cap makes a few quickly aborted sounds, before settling on uncomfortable silence. _Me too pal_ Bucky thinks, a little ungraciously. After his quick departure last time they’d played together, Bucky had turned on his old, embarrassing nostalgia playlist, curled up in bed, and spent a good long while thinking. Some of that thinking had included punching his pillow like a tough guy and sniffling like a baby, but he considered it pretty productive nonetheless. 

Yes, Bucky’s hurt. He’s disappointed. These two things are not strictly Cap’s fault, because Cap had never actually spoken to him about a relationship. So even though Bucky had wanted to blame him, he eventually decided he can’t. (It’s so annoying being a good person, honestly.) In the end, Bucky’d decided, his options were to accept Cap’s friendship or cut Cap out of life altogether. 

Obviously, Bucky hadn’t decided to erase Cap. Maybe it’s pathetic or unhealthy or whatever, but Bucky really actually likes Cap, as a person, so ignoring him completely is completely undesirable on a lot of levels. He does have every intention of being a pissy little snot for the foreseeable future though. It’s only fair, in Bucky’s opinion, that he get to act out some of his unhappiness. 

“Uh, Bucky,” Cap says uncertainly. The man practically needs a machete to hack through the awkward tension between them. 

“Yeah?” Bucky asks, making a point to sound disinterested. Cap had said he didn’t want their relationship to change, but Bucky needs to set a boundary for himself. If that means being a little less invested in everything Cap says, then so be it. 

He’s pretending to be uninterested, anyway. Fake it ‘til you make it, as they say. 

“Can we talk about last time?” Cap says, his voice full of determination. “I think what I wanted to say got misconstrued, so I’ve been thinking about a better way to word it.”

Bucky wrinkles his nose, frowning. Already, he can feel hope surging to life in his chest and he really doesn’t need that. He doesn’t need to get his hopes up again just to have them smashed. Swallowing thickly, Bucky wrangles his stupid heart into submission and braces himself for whatever is about to come. 

“I don’t think it’s that hard to get the correct meaning out of ‘I don’t want things to change,’ pal,” Bucky says, trying to sound amused. He doesn’t. 

“Bucky,” Cap pleads, and Bucky quickly cuts him off. Bucky’s weak and his resolve won’t be able to withstand much of that tone in Cap’s voice. 

“Aren’t we gonna play? Do you need to do the daily?”

Cap is silent for so long, Bucky starts getting jittery. He taps his controller against his knee quickly, chewing on his lip. 

“So?” Bucky snaps finally. 

“Uh,” Cap stutters and continues in a subdued voice, “I guess. Yeah, I mean.”

Bucky winces a little, at both the terrible awkwardness between them and Cap’s obvious upset. Maybe Bucky should have let him try to explain himself. Maybe it was all a big misunderstanding. 

“Right,” Bucky announces loudly, trying to drown out the little hopeful voice in his head encouraging that most recent train of thought. Maintaining distance with Cap is for his own good! If only his stupid heart would get the memo. 

“I just… have to stop at the Tower,” Cap says. His voice starts out all tragic, but he rallies really well at the end. He almost sounds like he’s not the human equivalent of a discarded, wet towel. Like soppy and cold and plopped in a ball of misery. 

“Kay,” Bucky mutters. “Join me when you’re ready.”

The next few minutes pass in torturously uncomfortable silence and Bucky’s agitated fidgeting becomes progressively more pronounced. He shifts around on the couch, flicking long bangs out of his eyes, and tapping his fingers against the back of his controller. He’s about two breaths away from jumping up and pacing in front of his Xbox when Cap finally joins up. 

“Jesus, did you buy the entire Tower?” he whines, starting up the daily heroic story mission. 

“Sorry,” Cap chuckles, although it’s a pretty weak sound. “I had to move a lot of stuff around in my vault.” 

“Yeah, of course,” Bucky agrees, although he’s not sure Cap’s ever actually used his vault once in the entire time they’ve been playing together. 

The daily mission is Dreadnaught, one of Bucky’s favorites, but even his delight at playing a well loved level isn’t enough to overcome the discomfort between him and Cap at the moment. Neither of them talk much, aside from an occasional enemy call out, and the tension ratchets higher with every passing second. By the time they get the post mission rewards screen, Bucky feels like he’s about to burst. 

“Hey,” Bucky mumbles, feeling like a fucking heel but honestly desperate to get away, “I have to go. Sorry man.”

What a goddamn lie. He’s going to set his status to “offline” and continue playing by himself like a miserable pissbaby. 

“Oh,” Cap exhales, quiet and breathy. “Okay, then.”

Bucky presses his lips together and tries not to feel like the world’s biggest asshole. 

“Yeah, so,” he says feebly, “I’ll talk to you later I guess.”

“I guess,” Cap mutters. Bucky starts navigating to the Xbox dashboard so he can leave the party, when Cap speaks up again. There’s still hesitancy to his voice, but now there’s a strength, too. Bucky’s honestly so relieved to hear it. “Wait, before you go, Buck…”

“Yeah?” Bucky asks, thumb hesitating over the A button that will disconnect him from their chat. 

“Do you still want me to come to Comic-Con?”

Bucky bites his bottom lip so hard, he actually flinches. Fuck, he didn’t think he’d been that hard on Cap. Although, looking at the completely stilted, difficult interaction he’s currently trying to run away from, maybe he was that harsh. If Cap had started this mess with his declaration that things shouldn’t change, then Bucky has obviously upgraded it to full blown disaster with his own behavior. Keeping Cap from explaining himself was probably not the best route, in hindsight. 

Not that Bucky’s going to do anything about it now. 

“Yeah, pal,” he breezes, trying to keep things easy. He probably sounds like a huge prick, knowing his luck. “It’s always great meeting my online friends in person.”

“Okay,” Cap says. His voice is carefully neutral. Bucky can’t tell what he’s feeling, even a little. “I guess I’ll see you, Buck.”

“Uh, yeah. Night, Cap,” Bucky stumbles, and taps the A button to freedom. He dutifully switches his status to “Appear Offline,” then flops back onto his couch. He scrubs his hands over his face, feeling pathetic. 

He watches his Xbox dashboard through his fingers for a few long minutes, wondering at the mess this simple, wonderful thing between him and Cap has become. How have they both misstepped so thoroughly? And, more importantly, is there any way for them to salvage it?

“Oh my god, stop,” he groans aloud, snagging a couch pillow and smashing it against his face. Hadn’t he spent hours deciding the best thing he could do for himself was to create space between him and Cap? Agonizing over Cap’s obvious upset is not going to help him, even if he does sort of feel like shit about it. 

(And, if he’s being honest, it feels a little good, too, to hear how upset Cap was. Like maybe Cap is stupidly invested in their dumb online relationship too.)

“Ugh, I need to stop thinking so much,” he complains, muffled into his pillow. He flings it at the opposite end of the couch, missing by a mile and sending it flying through his tiny living room. Fuck it, he decides, he’s watching Netflix until his eyeballs burn and he can pretend everything is totally cool. He’s been meaning to catch up on Supergirl, anyway.


	13. The Walls Come Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It liiiives. I have no excuse for how long this took. I've just been working on other things tbh. u_u Things are progressing though! Not much left to go before our boys meet in person. :D
> 
> I want to give a huge shout out to [SarahBrumbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarahBrumbles/pseuds/SarahBrumbles) for the super awesome art of our boys in Destiny armor! Link to the art is at the bottom of the page. Go check it out and leave lots of love!

“C’mon,” Bucky moans, watching his character stumble and slip down a hill. In a misguided attempt to stave off his yearning for the future Mass Effect game, he’d decided to replay Dragon Age. He’s regretting it now. “How the fuck do I get to the top of this fucking hill?”

He reaches blindly for his phone, intent on presenting his question to Google, but when the screen lights up, there are messages from Becca. With a groan, he puts his mountaineering attempt on hold and focuses on his phone. 

From Becca:  
hey dipshit

From Becca:  
what did you do dumb ass?

From Becca:  
you don’t even know do you

From Becca:  
check your instagram

Bucky scrunches up his nose, holding his phone up before his face. “Wow, rude,” he mutters, typing a quick reply. 

To Becca:  
hey asshole stfu

He sends it with a satisfied nod, and ignores Becca’s demand despite the curiosity itching at him. Cap is the only reason he has to check Instagram, which Becca definitely knows, so there must be something new from him. Stubbornly, Bucky continues to Google and searches for a walkthrough for climbing a stupid, shitty video game mountain. Instagram can damn well wait. 

Except his curiosity grows as his mind churns through (ridiculous, outrageous) possibilities, and eventually gives way to an anxious aching. His leg starts bouncing in place and his mind is a million miles away from the game before him. Even with the very obvious quest markers on his map, he can’t quite focus on what he’s supposed to be doing. 

“Fine,” Bucky barks, tossing his controller none too gently into the couch cushions and grabbing up his phone. With sharp, jerky motions, he brings up Instagram and navigates to Cap’s page. The most recent picture is a rough sketch and, when he clicks on the thumbnail, it’s clearly Bucky’s hunter. (The lovingly detailed bone spurs on the pants give it away - if Bucky ever stops using Bones of Eao, he’s likely been replaced with a pod person.) Cap’s titan is in the picture too, but small and angled in such a way that it looks like Bucky’s hunter is flying far above him. There’s something sad about it, a little lonely. Bucky huffs a sigh and makes himself read the comment. 

“I’m sorry, Buck. Please give me a chance to explain. -Steve,” it reads. Bucky presses his lips together and screws up his face against the strange onslaught of emotion it invokes in him. His chest feels tight and his stomach is twisting into knots. He’s _missed_ Cap, damn it all, and the realization makes him feel so incredibly stupid for being angry. 

He puts his phone down and marches around his apartment for a few minutes, eventually stopping in the kitchen to chug a glass of water. It sits heavy in his stomach, but at least it distracts from the agitated simmering his insides are engaged in. He takes a deep, steadying breath and returns to his phone. 

The picture is still there, staring up at him forlornly. Bucky sighs, rereading the message, except this time his eyes catch on the name tacked onto the end. The confusing rush of emotion chokes off and Bucky stares in wide eyed stupor at the innocuous, shockingly generic name. 

“Steve,” he whispers at his phone. He barks a laugh and looks around the room, as if he’ll be able to find someone to make “can you believe this fucking guy?” faces with. He switches to his chain of recent messages with his sister instead.

To Becca:  
his name is steve!!!

He laughs aloud, strangely giddy. “His name is Steve,” he announces to the empty room, grinning like a fool. It’s nothing, a completely bland first name, but it feels like a concession. Cap ( _Steve_ Bucky’s mind whispers, _fucking Steve, dude_ ) doesn’t give away much of anything personal, so adding his name must be a deliberate show of his willingness to meet Bucky halfway. 

His phone lights up with a new message from Becca and he scoops it up quickly. 

From Becca:  
yeah i can read too 

Before he has a chance to sass her back, another message arrives. 

From Becca:  
are you going to talk to him?

From Becca:  
wait let me rephrase that

From Becca:  
you had better fucking talk to him james buchanan barnes i s2g

Bucky rolls his eyes. His sister is so dramatic. And who does she think she is, bossing him around like this?

To Becca:  
yes ok i’ll fucking talk to him chill

He drops his phone onto the couch, face down so he won’t notice his sister’s continued pestering, and stares long and hard at his Xbox. He could respond on Instagram, but it’d be right there for everyone on the planet to see and Bucky would rather not have this drama readily accessible. Which means a message on Xbox Live is his best bet. Efficient and blessedly private. 

He grabs his abandoned controller and wakes it back up, slapping the B button with far too much vigor. Scrolling through his Xbox menu, he checks first that Cap isn’t online because that’s a level of awkward he’s not prepared for, then opens a new message. Typing with his controller is slow going so it’s going on nearly a full minute before he sits back to survey the results. 

“Saw your post on Instagram,” he reads aloud to himself. “If you’re ready to stop being a mysterious asshole, I’m ready to listen.”

It’s maybe a little harsher than strictly necessary but Bucky can’t find it in himself to be more diplomatic. 

“If he can’t deal with me at my worst,” Bucky mutters, tapping A over the send button, “then he doesn’t deserve me at my best.”

Then, because Bucky is a coward and he knows it, he navigates to his profile so he can switch his status from “online” to “appearing offline.” He’s watching the little loading line twirl in circle after circle mindlessly when his Xbox bloops to inform him he has a message. 

Heart leaping into his throat, Bucky stares as the familiar gamertag and icon appear.

“You fucking punk,” Bucky hisses. “Appearing offline was going to be my schtick.”

Pulse jumping under his skin and nerves making him hot, Bucky opens the message. It says simply “party?” and Bucky heaves a sigh. He wasn’t really mentally or emotionally prepared to do this _right_ this second, but sure, why not? He grabs his headset from the end table and plugs it in, opening the party menu and sending Cap an invite. 

“Hi Bucky,” Cap says when the party connects. 

“Hi _Steve_ ,” Bucky replies, trying not to sound like a snotty little brat. He’s marginally successful. 

“Uh,” Steve coughs, the sound morphing into an uncomfortable chuckle. “Right.”

Bucky blows a breath through pursed lips, trying to shake loose the nasty knot of unpleasant emotions twisted up in his gut. Becca will know, somehow, if he doesn’t make an effort here, and she might actually kill him this time. 

“Right,” Bucky echoes. “So, sorry I’ve been such a dick lately. But I mean… You’re confusing. I’m really fucking confused.”

His fingers drum against his controller without rhythm, anxious to be admitting how off kilter he’s been since they first clashed. 

“I… Yeah,” Cap groans. Subdued, he continues, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” He trails off, searching for the right words. 

_Break my heart_? Bucky suggests mentally, but it’s way too theatrical, even for him. 

“Okay, look,” Steve says into the awkward silence. His voice is firm, tone clear. “I think there are a few things we need to make clear right now, before this goes any further.”

Bucky feels a chill cut through his nervous flush, making goosebumps rise on his arms. Oh no, he does not like where this is going. 

“Okay,” he chokes, because he’s weak and it’s been too long since they’ve spoken and Cap’s voice has peeled back all the layers of stupidity, hurt, and anger he’s been wrapped up in lately. He wants their warm, easy banter back. 

“Okay,” Steve agrees. Bucky hears him take a deep breath and release it slowly. “I like you. I really like you, and I’d like to take you out for dinner while I’m in New York, if you’re interested.”

Bucky’s controller falls out of his limp fingers into his lap and he slaps his hands over his face, narrowly missing his mic. He makes himself breathe slowly, too stunned at first to really react in any way. One at a time, he takes stock of his emotions. Beneath the shock is a wild surge of glee, bright and happy and loud. Under that is frustration. Why’d Cap have to wait so long to say something? None of this stupid drama would have happened at all if he’d been this straightforward from the get go. Finally, lingering confusion because none of this has really cleared up the original issue. 

“Uh, Buck?” Steve prompts, the faintest tremor of uncertainty making his voice wobble. Bucky shoves aside the frustration, tables the confusion for later review, and focuses on the glee.

“Oh my god,” Bucky exclaims, surprising himself. “Holy shit, yes.” 

All that effort he’d put into flirting has finally paid off. He gives himself a high five. 

“Don’t say that until you’ve actually met me,” Steve murmurs. It sounds like he’s joking, but there’s something about his voice that seems off. Uncomfortable, maybe even a little miserable. Bucky takes a deep breath and tries to find some chill. 

“Okay, so, what’s the deal?” He gestures vaguely at his TV, as if it’s going to respond for Cap. “There’s obviously some reason you’re worried about meeting in person.”

Cap doesn’t reply right away, and Bucky can feel dread starting to creep in around the edges of his happiness. He barely breathes, waiting for an answer. 

“I’m something of a public figure,” Steve says finally, embarrassment clear in his voice. “There’s… a lot of baggage involved in that.”

Bucky blinks. This is not the answer he’d expected. PTSD? Sure. Closeted and afraid to come out? All right. Public figure… what? 

“What,” Bucky says flatly, “do you mean by ‘public figure’?” 

“I protect people from,” he pauses and continues a little incredulously, “some pretty wild shit, frankly.” He waits for Bucky’s surprised laugh to settle before continuing. “Sometimes I end up on TV because of it, is all.”

“What, like a superhero?” Bucky snorts, smirking to himself. The expression drains from his face little by little when Cap doesn’t refute his statement. “Fuck, _are_ you a superhero?”

“Um,” Steve replies, eloquently. 

“Oh my god,” Bucky mutters. Overwhelmed laughter starts bubbling out of his mouth. “Oh my god, is that why you hate Captain America? He’s stealing your thunder.”

As soon as he says it though, his mind shudders and something clunks into place. An ex-military public figure named Steve who answers to Cap? He squints into his empty living room, trying to put the pieces together in a way that makes sense. It probably makes him look like the damn confused math lady meme, baffled by things completely beyond his ability to comprehend. 

“I don’t _hate_ Captain America,” Steve grumbles, petulant. “It’s just the symbolism,” he breaks off with an annoyed sigh. Bucky shakes his head hard, trying to get rid of the thought taking root in his mind. There’s no goddamn way. It’s not possible that Bucky Barnes, hot mess millennial, has been playing Destiny with Steve Rogers, national symbol of truth, justice, and patriotism. 

“Right,” Bucky snickers, “the symbolism.”

“Shut up, Buck,” Steve whines, voice twinging high like a child. Bucky nods once, firmly. There’s no way Captain America would whine like that. Besides, there are like… a million small time superheroes in the world. Damn, there are at least four roaming around New York alone. Who knows what kind of minor superhero population DC has. 

“You know there are rumors that Captain America is going to be at Comic-Con right?” Bucky teases, feeling lighter than he has in weeks. Whatever public figure baggage Steve is dragging around, Bucky is ready to give it a try. “Are you gonna survive?”

“Probably not,” Steve groans, to Bucky’s amusement. 

“Well, as long as you take me out to dinner before you expire,” Bucky grins. 

“As long as you get the free food, huh?”

Bucky laughs. “Yeah, that’s definitely it.”

Steve clears his throat. “So… Does that clear things up between us?”

Bucky’s knee jerk reaction is to assure him that everything is great, so he makes himself take his time to answer. It certainly helps that he knows, without doubt, that Cap wants more from their relationship than friendship. And even if he hasn’t given Bucky the whole story yet, he’s given him enough to understand his reluctance to share. Even Bucky can (begrudgingly) admit that some things are not really suited to sharing online. He smiles. 

“Yeah, I think things are pretty clear now,” Bucky chirps. 

Steve chuckles, breathy and full of relief. “Okay, good.”

“Aw, you were worried,” Bucky laughs, smiling wide. 

“I posted that sketch two weeks ago, Bucky,” Steve says. “I was starting to think you’d never forgive me.”

“Oh,” Bucky breathes, the realization punching a hole in his happiness. “Uh, for what it’s worth, I was miserable the whole time and I’m sorry for being such an asshole.”

“I forgive you,” Steve says. “I understood why you were angry, anyway.”

“Still,” Bucky insists, annoyed with himself all over again. Think of all the time he’d wasted being a sack of steaming garbage when he could have been grinning his damn face off chatting with Steve instead.

Steve hums quietly. “So, we’re good?”

“We’re good,” Bucky agrees. 

“Then I should probably go,” Steve sighs. “I’ve got… stuff to do.”

“Top secret superhero stuff,” Bucky says playfully. 

“Yeah, you got me,” Steve laughs. “I’ll talk to you soon?”

Bucky bites his lip, smiling. “You’d better.”

“Then I will,” Steve replies. “Bye Bucky.”

“Bye Steve,” Bucky calls, grinning. 

The party disconnects, and Bucky flops back onto his couch, smiling so wide his cheeks ache. Dreamily, he pats around the couch for his phone, unlocking it unseeingly and typing a message. 

To Becca:  
guess who’s got a date for nycc

He waits in a happy daze, barely noticing the minutes passing before his sister replies. 

From Becca:  
damn bro get some

He smiles, an idea taking shape in his mind. 

To Becca:  
and i have an idea for a costume

To Becca:  
wanna help?

She’s too invested in his relationship with Steve to say no, so he doesn’t wait for her response. He pushes to his feet and heads to his bedroom to dig out his laptop. If he’s going to pull this off, he’s going to need reference photos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first paragraph bucky is me rn, btw


	14. but at the end he was brighter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗᕕ( ᐕ )ᕗᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗᕕ( ᐕ )ᕗᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗᕕ( ᐕ )ᕗ

“I’m just saying,” Becca says cheerfully, bouncing along beside him, “it’s super cute that you’re already dressing alike.”

Bucky looks down at himself, then turns a glare at his sister. “How many times do I have to tell you he’s _not_ Captain America, Beck?”

“Bucky,” Becca says, pitying, “the denial was charming at first, but now it’s just sad.”

“Becca,” Bucky groans childishly, catching her elbow and dragging her out of the flow of traffic. They end up squished into a little space between two booths. “He’s not Captain America, okay? There’s just no fucking way.”

“Why not?” Becca fires back, scowling at him. “Why can’t he be Captain America?”

“Why would a superhero from World War II waste his time talking to me on Xbox Live?”

“Flirting with you,” Becca corrects immediately, smirking like the cat who got the cream. “Maybe he’s been _flirting_ with you on Xbox Live because he likes you.”

Bucky coughs up a little whine, completely incapable of dealing with this feelings situation he’s found himself in.

“I know,” Becca soothes, patting his shoulder. “I don’t know what he sees in you either.”

“I hate you,” Bucky groans, shoving her back into the traffic and joining her in walking between the endless booths. He eyes Becca’s costume as they walk, frowning at the silly bowler hat and striped sweater. “Who are you supposed to be anyway?”

“You don’t know who I am?” Becca squawks. “Your boyfriend is going to be so upset to know you can’t even recognize his old teammates!”

“Or maybe your costume just sucks,” Bucky retorts. His costume is superb, of course. Years of needing to craft his own Halloween costumes has obviously paid off. 

“Whatever,” Becca snaps, crossing her arms and pouting. “Where are we meeting your boyfriend?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Bucky insists. If he’s lucky, that will change soon but it’s better not to get his hopes up. 

“Well he definitely won’t be after he realizes how much of a tool you are.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Whatever,” he grumbles. “We have to go down a floor.”

Becca, like a tiny and exceptionally polite bulldozer, pushes through the hoard of people and Bucky follows in her wake. They make their way down a floor and weave through the much lighter crowd to the spot Bucky had picked for meeting Steve. He’s relieved to see how scarce his fellow con goers are in the area. Less people around to watch him make a damn fool of himself. 

They’re early, which leaves Bucky to stand around suffering from the nerves. Becca is studiously ignoring him, tapping at her phone nonchalantly. Bucky shuffles and sighs, digging through his utility belt for his own phone. He sends a quiet thanks to whoever designed Cap’s uniform to be so functional. Pocketless costumes are the bane of his existence. 

“Your boy is coming with a couple of his friends, right?” Becca asks, breaking their uncomfortable silence. 

“Yeah,” Bucky mutters, looking up to scan the room automatically. He notices Becca gesturing with her phone and turns in that direction. He squints through the mingling people until he sees the little group Becca must be pointing toward. There are three of them; two tall, broad men and a petite woman. They’re all wearing their own rendition of the Captain America uniform, which, given the sheer number of Cap cosplayers who’d crawled out of the woodwork to see the man himself (only to be disappointed when Tony Stark was the only Avenger to show), isn’t all that surprising. 

“That’s them right?” Becca asks, lifting her hand into the air and waving vigorously. Bucky chokes, wrapping his arms around her and trying to wrestle her arm down. 

“Oh my god, Becca, stop,” he pleads. She grits her teeth, struggling to keep waving, even though Bucky’s stronger than her. When her arm goes unexpectedly limp, Bucky winces. There’s no way she’s given up that easily. 

“Oh look,” she chirps gleefully, “they’re coming this way.”

Bucky steals a glance. The taller of the two men has his hand lifted in an answering wave and the trio is making their way over. Bucky gulps around his sudden anxiety. 

It’s not like he’s never met an online friend before, but he’s never had feelings like this for an online friend before either. He fidgets, putting space between himself and Becca, unable to decide if he wants to smile or vomit. 

As they get closer, Bucky gets a better view of them. The woman is small, nearly a head shorter than the men, and wearing the deep navy uniform Cap had worn for a stretch while working with Shield. Not that Bucky like… keeps track of Cap’s uniforms or anything. The navy one was just kinda hot, is all. 

The shorter of the two men is wearing a uniform Bucky’s never seen before. Where Bucky had decided to customize his look with a lot of black, this guy had gone for more white. Broad white stripes all over the chest and shoulders, rising up into the… mask thingy he’s got. It’s an interesting look and Bucky is definitely digging it. 

The best one, however, is the absolutely ridiculous (and hella banging, _good lord_ ) classic USO look the third member of the trio is wearing. The bright red boots and gloves, the blue short shorts over the blue leggings. Not to mention how fucking ripped this guy is, pecs clearly visible under the thin, stretchy material of his top. Bucky feels a sudden need to fan himself, or drink a glass of cool water, or maybe just dump a fucking bucket of ice water on his head. 

“Shit,” he whispers, trying to keep the distress off his face. Beside him, Becca snickers. 

“So, Captain America brought the Black Widow and Falcon with him,” she smirks. 

“Shut up,” Bucky hisses through clenched teeth. Sure, these three do have very similar physical attributes to Cap and his favorite superhero pals, but that doesn’t actually mean anything. 

(Bucky is totally aware of how desperate his justifications are getting. It’s bad, holy shit, it’s so bad.)

“You think Falcon will let me get a selfie with him?” Becca asks, unperturbed. “He’s got, like, the cutest gap between his front teeth and I need to Instagram that shit.”

“You’re not Instagraming anything,” Bucky says firmly. Becca rolls her eyes. 

“Maybe Black Widow will give me her autograph,” she muses. “Do you think handing out autographs is bad for super spy business?”

“Probably,” Bucky mutters. Becca smirks at him, and he backtracks hastily. “Except she’s not the Black Widow so it won’t matter.”

Becca frowns at him, before pasting a wide smile on her face and turning to greet the new arrivals. “Hello,” she sings, “I’m Becca, Bucky’s little sister. It’s so nice to meet all of you!”

The closest to her, Mr. White Shoulders Cap, holds his hand out. While they’re shaking, he points with his other hand. “Dum Dum?” he asks, grinning. Becca was right - he does have a very charming gap between his front teeth. 

“Yes,” Becca squeals, obviously delighted. She flicks the brim of her bowler with her free hand, earning a round of laughter, and Bucky feels a great surge of affection for her. She’s annoying, but damn does he love his baby sister. 

Also, Dum Dum. Who would have guessed?

(Not Bucky, obviously.)

“Nice,” White Shoulders Cap says brightly. “I’m Sam.”

“Nice to meet you, _Sam_ ,” Becca says, giving Bucky a very unsubtle look. 

“Right,” Sam says slowly, before extricating himself from Becca’s grip and holding a hand out to Bucky. “I’m guessing you’re Bucky?”

“That’s me,” Bucky agrees, shaking his hand. He recognizes the voice. “Nice to meet you for real, Bird Brain.”

Bucky pulls away, probably a little too abruptly, because he completely misses Sam’s reply, but next in line is _Steve_. He must be Steve! The super hot guy in booty shorts is Steve, _holy fuck_. Except they’ve switched positions, so Bucky finds himself looking down at Lady Cap. She’s wearing a smile that looks like a knife. A knife pointed right at Bucky’s throat. Bucky gulps. 

“Hi,” he says weakly. 

“Hi,” she replies steadily, offering her hand. Bucky takes it gingerly. This tiny woman is terrifying. Bucky wants an adult to remove him from this uncomfortable situation, but he also very much doesn’t want to move and allow his sister to meet her. Becca does not need to learn how to be this powerful. 

“Natasha,” she informs him, expression challenging even with the frankly ridiculous cowl covering half her face. 

“Bucky,” he squeaks, voice pitching outrageously high. As soon as he stops _fearing for his life_ , he’s going to be so embarrassed. Their handshake goes on for decades, Bucky growing increasingly more horrified by this entire encounter. He’s too afraid to take his eyes away from this terrifying, deadly, and sort of outrageously hot woman in front of him, but he hears Becca pipe up beside them.

“Hi,” she cheeps, “you must be Steve. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

She’s answered with a low, rumbling laugh. Bucky has heard it a million times, but it sounds so much more amazing in person. He almost braves looking. 

“It’s nice to meet you, Becca,” Steve says sincerely. “I like your costume.”

“Thanks!” Becca cries, obviously completely charmed. Bucky wants to throttle her, just a little. No fair macking on his guy while he’s about to be eaten by this tiger lady. “We spent a lot of time on Bucky’s, so I kinda had to throw mine together last minute.”

“I think Dum Dum would have been pleased to see it,” Steve tells her, serious and subdued. Bucky’s eyes flick to the side and Natasha’s grip tightens around his hand warningly. He snaps back to her and she smirks. 

“All right,” she murmurs. “I guess you pass.”

Bucky doesn’t know if he should be grateful or terrified. 

“For now,” Natasha adds, releasing his hand. 

Terrified it is. 

Then Bucky is stepping sideways and looking up into bright blue eyes and the butterflies in his stomach get a little frantic. “Hi,” he chokes out, completely thrown off his game. 

“Hey Buck,” Steve says. He smiles, small but warm. It’s a good smile, Bucky decides, and not only because his lips are hella thick, _hot damn_. 

“It’s nice to finally meet you,” Bucky says, stilted. He winces. 

Steve huffs a laugh, shaking Bucky’s hand. Bucky looks at him. And looks at him some more. And thinks about the Captain America poster on his bedroom wall for… _emergencies_. And keeps looking at him. 

He knows that jawline. 

Fuck. 

Goddamn it. 

“Steve,” Bucky mumbles, certain his brain is actually melting and draining out through his ears. “You’re Captain America.”

“So are you, apparently,” Steve jokes, gesturing at Bucky’s costume. Bucky looks down at himself, realizes they still haven’t let go of each other’s hands, and groans. 

“Oh my god,” Bucky whines, screwing his eyes shut. “I told you about the poster.”

“What poster?” Steve asks, sounding genuinely confused. 

“No, okay, that’s fine,” Bucky says, nodding absently. “You can pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. Maybe I won’t die of embarrassment this way.”

“Um,” Steve stutters uncertainly. He has very nice hands, Bucky notes vaguely in the moment his brain takes for a breath between all the screaming it’s doing. “All right. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Your manners are impeccable,” Bucky blurts, “but your lips aren’t.”

 _Holy shit_ why can’t he stop himself?

“Im- _peck_ -able, right?” His brain has clearly lost control of his mouth. What is he even saying? “Get it?”

Steve’s eyebrows quirk bemusedly and Bucky’s already scrambling for something to salvage this shit show. He’s saved by Becca, who leaps on his back and claps her hands over his mouth. Bucky silently thanks not only God but Jesus for his sister’s timely intervention. 

“Please forgive Bucky,” Becca announces, clearly amused even as she’s saving him from further shame. “He’s having a meltdown and he can’t actually control anything coming out of his mouth right now.”

Okay, so not exactly the save he was looking for, but…

“What about things going into his mouth?” Steve asks, but his eyes widen with every word, like he can hear what he’s saying but has no power to stop it. Red explodes across his face, unfurling down his throat and contrasting brilliantly with the rich blue of his shirt. 

Bucky gapes. Oh, this is _much_ more humiliating. Maybe he’ll just fucking die, that’d be good.

“I--I mean,” Steve stumbles, voice tight with obvious embarrassment. “Food. There’s a,” he pauses, gesturing awkwardly, “food court. Lunch.”

Bucky’s face is hot. Judging by the color of Steve’s face, he’s probably gone outright nuclear. 

Natasha steps up to pat Steve’s bicep consolingly, which Bucky sort of wishes he’d thought of because those biceps were meant to be fondled. Sam, smiling wide, waves a hand over Steve like he’s a prize on The Price Is Right. 

“Our boy here hasn’t eaten for like, 20 minutes, so you’ll have to excuse him,” Sam says, laughter barely held in check. “He’s probably delirious with hunger.” 

Natasha winks at Bucky. What the fuck ever that means. “I think,” she says, “Steve meant to invite you two to lunch with us.”

Becca’s hands are still clamped over Bucky’s mouth. She’s still hanging off his back like the pet monkey he’s never really wanted. He’s still got a death grip on Steve’s hand. It’s getting kinda sweaty and gross. He doesn’t know if he’s embarrassed for himself, or Steve, or just sort of weirdly turned on. 

“Sure!” Becca agrees, much too chipper. “We love lunch!” She hops away from Bucky and starts walking. Sam and Natasha depart pretty much immediately behind her. 

“Let’s go, love birds,” Natasha calls teasingly. 

“Quit holding hands and get moving,” Sam adds. 

Becca bursts into hysterical giggles, helping exactly no one. 

“Oh my god,” Bucky whispers, staring down at their joined hands. 

“I am _so_ sorry,” Steve apologizes, embarrassed but genuine. Bucky looks up at him. They stare at each other for a long moment. Steve’s lips start twitching. Bucky chokes back a hysterical laugh. Steve squeezes his hand, Bucky squeezes back. 

They break into laughter, raucous and relieved. 

Well, Bucky supposes, it could have been worse.  
\---

It gets worse.

Lunch is a study in misery. Becca gets on with Natasha and Sam like a house on fire (a very old, very dry house full of lighter fluid), so naturally the three of them are nonstop laughs at Bucky and Steve’s joint humiliation. Every time Bucky goes to wedge another fry in his mouth, someone starts snickering, which makes Steve blush. (Bucky doesn’t blush, but that’s probably because the more time he spends looking at Steve, the less blood he actually has flowing toward his head.) As soon as Steve blushes, someone starts making lewd comments (not Becca, thank fuck), and really, Bucky is not mentally equipped to deal with dirty comments when his brain is already using 97% of its processing power thinking about Steve’s booty shorts. 

At least his brain is too tangled up in _ass ass ass_ to notice the giant, glaring neon signs blinking “CAPTAIN FUCKING AMERICA” at him. 

Because, like. Ha. Hahaha. **No**.

It’s not all bad though. As they leave the food court and begin trawling through the show floor, Bucky recognizes the bond that’s formed between him and Steve. Like students who have suffered an entire year of a particularly hellish class together, they’ve entered into brotherhood of unpleasant experience. Solidarity, and all that jazz. 

Which is good, because it quickly becomes apparent to Bucky that they’ve been conspired against. Becca suddenly needs to “use the ladies’ room” and Natasha naturally has to go with her, which is pretty par for the course in Bucky’s experience. Girls just go to the bathroom together, no big. The conspiracy becomes glaringly obvious, however, when Sam decides to escort them to the door, like some kind of knight in shining armor. 

Really, like Natasha would ever need someone to escort her anywhere. 

Except Bucky’s not thinking about it. 

La la la la la can’t hear you.

“So,” Bucky hedges, after 10 minutes have gone by with complete radio silence from their missing companions, “is it safe to assume they’ve ditched us?”

Steve puts his hands on his hips, which is clearly the pose that uniform was made for. That chest, those arms? Rawr. 

“There might be a line,” Steve says with a frown. “Maybe we should wait a little longer.”

“Look,” Bucky informs him, “you just met Becca, so you don’t know what she’s like. If there’s a 10 minute wait, Becca’s already peed herself.”

Steve barely swallows a laugh, eyebrows crinkling together like he’s concerned for Becca’s health and wellbeing. “Do you need to check up on her?”

“First of all, she’s an adult,” Bucky says. “Secondly, if she peed her pants, I don’t want to be associated with her.”

Steve does laugh, this time. Bucky mentally congratulates himself. “Okay,” Steve nods, “what do you suggest?”

“The video game stuff is that way,” Bucky points, standing on tiptoe to see over most of the crowd. 

“Okay,” Steve agrees. He places his hand between Bucky’s shoulder blades, gently urging him forward. Bucky’s knees turn to jelly from Steve’s touch and he stumbles forward. “Sorry,” Steve laughs ruefully. “Don’t know my own strength.”

Steve curls his hand around Bucky’s elbow to steady him, and Bucky laughs too, high pitched but totally on board with Steve’s hands on his person. “No, no,” Bucky waves away his apology. “Clearly I just need to hit the gym more to keep up with you.”

Steve laughs, but his smile goes all warm and soft. Bucky’s insides get a little goopy with that smile directed at him, so he makes himself face forward and guide them through the milling nerds. They lapse into quiet, rather than yelling over the hubbub, but Bucky is a-okay with everything because Steve’s hand is still tucked in the crook of his arm. 

Bucky’d probably be a-okay with the zombie apocalypse starting right here in Javits Center, so long as Steve doesn’t let go of him. 

They meander through the video game booths slowly, occasionally leaning close to point out an interesting game or laugh at the antics of the folks behind the counters. It is, Bucky realizes, sort of date-like. Strolling around, arm in arm, leaning into each other and sharing laughter. It’s nice, it’s really really nice, and Bucky has got the world’s biggest crush on a guy wearing tights and booty shorts. 

Bungie has one of the large booths and Destiny is on display. Steve tugs him over with barely concealed delight, and the two of them lean toward the clear merchandise case like children at a candy store. There are t-shirts and hats, a plushie of the game’s annoying AI companion, and posters. Bucky wants to buy all of it. 

“Do you want anything?” Steve asks, leaning close enough that his breath blows warm over Bucky’s cheek. His knee jerk reaction is to say “you” but that seems a little too cliche, and Steve doesn’t give him time to answer anyway. Probably for the better. “I’m getting that shirt.” 

Bucky follows his pointing finger to a stack of white shirts. Three stripes of yellow, orange, and purple adorn the chest. Oh. Oh no. Future War Cult. 

“No,” Bucky says immediately. “Anything but Future War Cult! It’s so ugly.”

“I like it,” Steve replies, smiling innocently. Bucky groans, collapsing against Steve’s side dramatically. Steve doesn’t even have the good sense to move with it, holding all of Bucky’s weight like it’s nothing. 

“I can’t believe I willingly spend time with someone who genuinely likes Future War Cult,” Bucky bemoans. 

“Better than Dead Orbit,” Steve teases, pointing to the camouflage shirt with the Dead Orbit symbol embossed on the front. Bucky’s mouth twists, like he’s sucking on a lemon. 

“We don’t talk about Dead Orbit’s new obsession with camo.”

Steve laughs, vibrations rumbling through the contact of their arms and jittering around in Bucky’s chest. He sucks in a short, sharp breath. That is a feeling he’d like to explore in great detail, preferably somewhere without a billion sweaty nerds. 

Like, two sweaty nerds is great, but a billion is a little too much okay?

“Hey,” Steve says, elbowing him gently, “do you want something?” 

“Oh, ah,” Bucky stumbles, thinking about how thin his wallet is after buying his pass and making his cosplay. “I really shouldn’t.”

“I’ve got you,” Steve offers. “If you want.”

Bucky chews on his bottom lip pensively. On the one hand, this is some really cute, first date shit and Bucky kind of does actually really want that plushie. On the other hand, he doesn’t really need it and he definitely doesn’t need to start taking charity already. How pathetic. 

“Uh, no, it’s fine,” Bucky says weakly. “I don’t need anything.”

“C’mon, Buck,” Steve wheedles. “I want to.”

Be strong Bucky. Be strong for Mother. 

“No, really, it’s okay,” he insists, probably with less conviction than he should have. “I have the hunter shirt at home so…”

“Either you pick something,” Steve threatens jokingly, “or I’m buying you that Dead Orbit shirt and I won’t leave until you put it on.”

“Then I’ll never put it on,” Bucky blurts without thinking, wrinkling his nose and screwing his eyes shut. Steve barks a laugh, surprised but warm. He swings his arm over Bucky’s shoulders and pulls him into a brief, sideways hug. It’s so fucking cute, Bucky has to hide his shy, happy smile against Steve’s collar. 

“How about, you tell me what you actually want,” Steve chuckles, “and you can owe me for next time.”

“Next time,” Bucky whispers, anticipation trickling through him. “Okay,” he says, nodding. “I really like the ghost.”

He points to the plushie and Steve smiles, using his height and muscles and probably incredible blue eyes to get the attention of a guy running the booth. Bucky hovers close at his shoulder, in case he needs to deter him from actually buying the Dead Orbit shirt. True facts, it’s ugly as fuck and Bucky doesn’t want any of that. 

As they move on, Steve plucks the ghost plushie out of his little plastic shopping bag and hands it over to Bucky. “You can leave it in the bag if you want, but I thought you’d want to see it first.”

Bucky grins, hugging it close. This isn’t even a date, but it’s still the best one he’s ever been on. “Thank you. I really like it.”

Steve smiles at him. “Of course,” he answers. “I’m glad you like it.”

They push on into what must be the comic book section of the showfloor, judging by the endless sea of Captain America’s and Iron Man’s. They shimmy through the crowd, getting the occasional nod of solidarity from other Caps or playful threats from the Iron Men. Bucky is gawking at a booth, trying to decide if it’s worth his time and effort to go check it out, when he walks square into Steve. 

“Hey,” Bucky whines, leaning around Steve to see what the hold up is. There’s a cluster of people gathered in front of them. A couple of tittering USO show girls, a Cap wearing a frankly ridiculous blue parka, a guy in a dark navy spandex suit with the red stripes of Union Jack on it, and a guy wearing nothing but green, scaley underpants. 

“Namor!” Bucky shouts, jabbing a finger in his direction. 

“Who?” Steve mutters, while the Namor cosplayer preens a little. 

“You know,” Bucky prompts, “Namor the Sub-Mariner? He’s from the Cap comics.”

“You think I read the comics?” Steve asks, affronted. Their eyes meet and Bucky swallows thickly. The very fiber of his being resists the idea that World War II hero Steve Rogers could be this wonderful, ridiculous nerd that Bucky’s been crushing on for ages now, but even he’s not delusional enough to pretend like that isn’t the case here. It makes sense, then, that Steve wouldn’t have read the stupid Cap comics that replaced all the brave men and women he’d known with weird fish dudes like Namor. 

“No,” Bucky mutters, looping his fingers around Steve’s wrist supportively. Fuck it, old war hero or not, Bucky really really likes him. “I guess not.”

By this point, Union Jack and weird Parka cap have wandered off, leaving the USO girls and Namor looking impatiently at them. 

“So, like,” Namor says, jabbing a finger at Steve, “can I get a picture with you? You’re like,” he pauses, making some hand gesture that’s probably supposed to be flattering, “the hottest Captain America I’ve ever seen.”

“Uh,” Steve mutters, shuffling a bit. 

“You can say no,” Bucky hisses, narrowing his eyes at Namor. He glares right back. 

“Maybe,” Steve says lowly, giving Bucky an uncertain look. If there’s one thing Bucky knows, it’s the fucking internet, and the internet will absolutely figure out that Steve is _the Steve_. Call Bucky possessive, but he absolutely won’t stand for some douche in green undies blowing Steve’s cover. 

“Look pal,” Bucky murmurs to Steve, “you can do whatever you want, but I don’t think a picture is the best idea.”

“Hey,” Namor interrupts, looking impatient. Impatient, but stupidly sculpted. Did Bucky miss half off day for cosplayers at the gym or something? “Why don’t we skip the picture and just go back to my place? I promise I’ll show you a good time.”

He does this little hip thrust thing and Bucky sees red. The nerve of this guy! Showing up in his tiny, green panties and hitting on Steve. Bucky’s been pining for literal months and fucking Namor is just gonna roll up and take Steve home with him. So yeah, okay, Namor is all muscley and Bucky is kinda not so much, and yeah, Bucky’s not really sure what Steve sees in him in the first place but… But still! Go to hell, Namor. 

Steve straightens up suddenly, shoulders squaring, and damn he’s intimidating when he wants to be. He loops his arm through Bucky’s, pulling him close to his side. “I appreciate your interest,” Steve says firmly, death grip on Bucky’s arm, “but I’m afraid I have to turn you down.”

Then he walks, putting his long legs to good use, and towing Bucky right along with him. Bucky, because he’s his own worst enemy, blinks up at Steve’s set jaw. 

“He was kinda hot you know,” Bucky points out, even as he desperately wants to silence himself. What the fuck is wrong with him? 

Steve snorts. “He wasn’t that hot.”

“I mean,” Bucky mutters, continuing to inexplicably dig himself deeper into this hole, “did you see his six pack?”

“If I cared about that,” Steve mutters, almost to himself, “I’d just look in a mirror.”

It takes Bucky’s brain at least 10 seconds of absolute silence to process that before he explodes into laughter, scrabbling at Steve to hold himself upright. After a moment, Steve laughs too, looping his arm around Bucky companionably. 

Bucky’s too busy enjoying the heft of Steve’s arm over his back to pay any attention, so he’s thoroughly surprised when he realizes Steve’s whisked him away into a totally empty hallway. They have definitely gone somewhere they aren’t supposed to be. 

“Uh, Steve.”

“Buck,” Steve says, low and strangely intimate. Bucky gulps, looking up to meet Steve’s eyes. Fingers brush along Bucky’s jaw, then Steve is stepping back and pulling his silly cowl off. The bright blond of his hair lies smooshed on one side, catching the fluorescent light poorly, but Bucky doesn’t even care. He’s so pretty, shit. 

Also, Captain America.

Like totally for real. 

“Captain America,” Bucky mutters, shaking his head. He’s actually losing his mind, right? None of this is real. He’s probably breathing his last breaths in a horrible car accident right now or something and this is all some dream his brain cooked up so he wouldn’t have to suffer. RIP Bucky. 

“I prefer Steve, actually,” he replies. 

“Steve,” Bucky exhales, because his brain is broken. Again. 

Steve huffs a laugh, poking Bucky in the forehead. “Take this off.”

“Yessir,” Bucky says, snapping to. He frantically peels his helmet off and drops it carelessly to the ground. Then he stands there, feeling awkward and pretty mediocre in comparison, while Steve looks at him. 

Steve smiles, reaching up to touch Bucky’s jaw again, and leans forward. Bucky’s so certain he’s about to get kissed, that he licks his lips and tilts his chin up. But Steve swerves to feather a kiss against his cheek instead. It’s such a fucking slick move, why the fuck didn’t Bucky know Captain America has moves? 

“Buck?” Steve asks softly. Bucky hums in response, still kind of trying to process everything. “Can I take you out to dinner?”

Bucky blinks, wide eyed. “Like… Like a date?”

Steve laughs. “Yes, like a date.”

“Holy shit.”

“That’s not really an answer.”

Bucky thinks about it for maybe half a second. Thinks about all the ridiculous conversations they’ve had via Xbox Live and the light, fluttery feeling he gets in his chest. About Steve, and how he’s clearly doing more with his life than Bucky’s ever even dreamed of doing. Shit, maybe this is going to be the worst thing he’s ever done, but Bucky wants to try it. He wants that nerd who’d decided to use Destiny’s stupid in game chat to talk to him in the Prison of Elders. 

“Yeah,” he says, nerves and joy churning together in his chest. “Yes, let’s do it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only 1 more to go...


	15. epilogue: you burn with the intensity of stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well folks. This is it. It's been a pretty wild ride. I never expected this fic to get so far, or to have so many fans. Actually, I originally planned this to be a one shot, just the first chapter. So thank you??? SO much. All of you who've read and commented and left kudos - you're the reason this fic exists. 
> 
> I'm not exactly done with these boys. I still have a couple short one shots left in my head, so keep an eye out for those. You can also come shout ideas/suggestions/comments/whatever at me over on [tumblr](http://deepdigitalflexor.tumblr.com/), if you want. I tend to post snippets or scrapped things there, too, if you've any interest. 
> 
> Anyway, here we go! <3

“They’re coming from B,” Bucky says, hustling around the outside of the circular map to Steve’s titan’s side. 

“I’m ready for them,” Steve replies, cool and confident. Bucky’s toes curl a little. 

“Okay, showoff,” he teases. “Impress me.”

Steve chuckles quietly, and Bucky keeps an eye on his radar. The swath of red denoting the enemy appears on his radar and Bucky takes a step back. Their competitors, a pair of hunters, rush through the open doorway, firing at Bucky. Pfft, as if he’s the one in this room they need to be worried about. 

With exquisite timing, Steve activates his super and thunder punches both of these losers into next week. 

“Nice!” Bucky crows, tapping his D-pad so his hunter breaks into dance. Ah, good. He has the Hotline Bling dance equipped. “We’re crushing these guys.”

Steve laughs softly. “I feel a little bad.”

Oh Steve. How precious. 

“Nah, don’t feel bad,” Bucky assures him. “They don’t suck. You’re just getting that good, babe.”

“Maybe,” Steve hedges, sounding hesitant to pin any of their success on himself. “You’ve been carrying us this far though.”

Bucky snorts. “No way. Remember two games back, you got that amazing come back double kill? And in our first game, you got into that shotgun duel with that douchebag titan and won.”

“I guess,” Steve mutters. “But you’ve been really clutch with your sniper today.”

Bucky grins at both the compliment and the word “clutch.” It’s always so delightful to hear Steve using gamer jargon picked up from talking to him. 

“No way, sweetheart,” he argues heatlessly. “I’ve been playing like shit today. This is all you.”

A heavy, annoyed sigh breaks through their ridiculous compliment circle jerk. 

“You two are disgusting,” Sam groans. “Just thank each other for the compliments and move on before I puke.”

“Aw Sam,” Bucky coos, because knowing who BirdMan actually is has given Bucky even more incentive to be kind of a dick, “do you feel left out?”

“Sorry Sam,” Steve says faithfully, although he’s clearly laughing, the shithead. 

“Neither of you are fucking sorry,” Sam retorts, but under all the suffering, he’s definitely having a chuckle too. “I’d never have gotten on to play with you in the first place if you’d told me it was Destiny Date Night.”

“It’s Crimson Doubles,” Steve says, as if that explains everything. Well, it’s clear to Bucky, but that doesn’t mean anyone else is thinking on the same wavelength here. 

“Yeah,” he says, backing Steve up immediately. “It’s a limited time event and we’ve gotta get the adorable matching Valentine’s shaders before it ends.”

“Sickening,” Sam reiterates, but he can’t stop laughter from bubbling in his voice this time. “Don’t you already have matching shaders?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, at the same time Steve huffs, “so many.”

“But this is the Valentine’s shader,” Steve insists. “We have to match.”

“And assert ourselves as the best couple on Destiny,” Bucky nods. 

“That’s it,” Sam groans. “I’m out. I can’t handle any more of you two nerds tonight.”

“No wait,” Bucky laughs, reaching toward his TV screen like he can actually stop Sam with the power of his mind alone. “You can’t leave us.”

Steve is laughing too, but as always, he plays the buffer between Sam and Bucky. “Alright,” he says warmly. “We’ll play your pick next time, okay?”

“Damn right,” Sam snorts. “Playin’ me like this when you’re about to leave. I can’t believe the shit I put up with for you.”

Steve goes along with that easy enough, laughingly denying it all, but Bucky’s mind is replaying that sentence. Something there doesn’t sound quite right.

“You’re leaving?”

“Uh,” Steve grunts intelligently.

“Oh-kay,” Sam drawls. “Guess you haven’t told him yet?”

“Not yet,” Steve grumbles reluctantly. 

“Then that’s my cue to go,” Sam chirrups. “Later gators.”

“See you Sam,” Steve replies quietly. 

Belatedly, Bucky sputters a quick goodbye as well. When the notification pops up telling them Sam has left their party, Bucky immediately jumps down Steve’s throat.

“You’re leaving?” He repeats. “Where are you going? How long? Is it another… mission thingie?”

Bucky’s brain still kind of breaks sometimes when he has to consciously acknowledge he’s in a bit of a strange long distance relationship with the actual Steve Rogers AKA Captain America.

“It’s not a mission,” Steve says calmly. “It’s not a bad thing, Bucky, I swear.”

“Well, don’t leave me hanging,” Bucky groans. 

“I’m moving.”

“No more DC?” Bucky asks cautiously. There’s like a west coast Avengers thing isn’t there? Would they send Steve there? Damn, having to accommodate the time difference will really put some strain on Bucky’s sleeping schedule. 

“No more DC,” Steve confirms and there’s something like excitement blooming in his voice. Well, if Steve’s happy about it, Bucky’s going to have to be too. California could be cool. Bucky could fly out to visit him if he can scrape together the money. Or maybe Steve can hook him up with a flight. “I’m coming back to New York.”

“Awesome,” Bucky grunts automatically, brain still focused on the logistics of the New York--California connection. Then it hits him. “New York!” He very nearly shrieks. “You’re coming back home!”

Steve laughs brightly. “Yeah,” he sighs happily. “Not Brooklyn, but…”

“But we’ll be in the same city!” Bucky laughs, dragging his feet up onto the couch and curling around his controller. He wishes he could hug Steve, but this will have to do for now. “We can have actual date nights!”

Steve hums happily, and Bucky chomps down on his bottom lip to hold some of the fizzly glee at bay. 

“When are you getting here?” Bucky asks, already impatient to have Steve in front of him again. He’s only been back to New York once since Comic-Con and Bucky’s kind of dying inside. 

“A couple weeks,” Steve says. “I’ll send you all the details.”

“Steve,” Bucky laughs, incredulous and thrilled. He’s not really sure what to do with all this newfound energy. He’s gonna need to tell Becca about this ASAP. She’s gonna flip. 

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Buck,” Steve murmurs, low and _so fucking hot_.

Bucky clamps a hand over his mouth and swallows a little whimper. He nudges his mic away from his mouth and takes a few deep, calming breaths. 

“Steve,” he says seriously, pushing his mic back into place. “It’s not a happy Valentine’s until we get matching shaders.”

Steve bursts into laughter, beautiful and unhindered. “You’re right,” he agrees, mock gravely. “We can’t rest until we’re the cutest couple on Destiny.”

Bucky beams at his TV, filled up with joyful affection. To think, all this because some _nerd_ didn’t understand the stigma surrounding Destiny’s stupid in game chat. 

“Cutest,” Bucky agrees, as their next match loads in. His hunter strikes a pose beside Steve’s titan and Bucky grins. That’ll be them before too long; side by side and looking fresh to death. “And most powerful.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, yes you absolutely can do the Hotline Bling dance in Destiny.
> 
>  
> 
> Secondly, thank you all so much for reading this! You have no idea how many times I almost gave up on this (because I'm hella lazy yoooo) but all your comments and love pushed me along. Also, like, a million thanks to [SiriusGrey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SiriusGrey/profile) because she has held my hand and cheered me on through my writing struggles these last few months. Like for real, I probably owe her like an edible arrangement or something by now. 
> 
> Last but not least, if you've gotten this far and liked what you read and want to read more, stay tuned. I've got a couple things in the works as we speak and I'm pretty certain I'll be signing up for the Stucky Big Bang this year. Cough, I hope you aren't sick of Destiny yet. 
> 
> <3333333

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Matchmaking - Artwork](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9153865) by [SarahBrumbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarahBrumbles/pseuds/SarahBrumbles)




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